


scattering stars like dust

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: After EpIX [8]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: After Wartime, Angst, Canonical Character Death, DailyDamerey, Episode IX Spoilers, F/M, Mild Language, Mild Smut, Peace, Post Episode IX, Pregnancy, Pregnancy complications, Prompt Fill, Unplanned Pregnancy, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22102435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: After the war the Resistance forges ahead, seeking to maintain peace in the galaxy. Rey of Jakku, who now knows her family legacy, tries to navigate the tricky responsibility of being the only Jedi in this shaky peacetime.And, after she spends the night of the Resistance's victory with the best pilot in the Resistance, both of them seeking comfort and safety in a moment of uncertainty, Rey's faced with a future now defined by something that might make her path much, much clearer.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: After EpIX [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575733
Comments: 272
Kudos: 390
Collections: Damerey Daily 2020





	1. victory

**Author's Note:**

> smut is v brief in this, but rated it M because ... they're definitely having sex as brief/sorta vague as it is  
> mild warning for vomit//morning sickness (character vomits//is nauseated, no description of vomit past that)
> 
> Day 1 prompt of DailyDamerey, which was "Unspin the laws," and included this blurbie, written by aimmyarrowshigh:
> 
> The war is over! The new Galaxy must begin without Luke, Leia, Han, or the looming threat of Palpatine. What will this new Galaxy look like as Poe and Rey unspin the laws of the New Republic and the Jedi to create their own world?

Rey glances up from her mug of caf to watch Jess Pava spin Iolo Arana across the clearing, both of them laughing uproariously, Arana ducking to fit under Jess’s arm every time. They spin dizzyingly as the rest of the pilots cheer them on, a wall of sound rising up to the unobscured night sky.

There’s so much happiness here tonight: but, Rey feels a thread of sorrow twining through it all. She can feel Wedge Antilles grieving his boy, his darling stepson, and she can see him resting his white head against Chewie’s arm. Chewie warbles now and then, an unsure note of grief for family found and family lost. Lando beams and wraps an arm around the girl he’s all but certain is his family, and Jannah leans into his side, both of them hiding hurts in their hearts that will take much more than a single victory to conquer. Finn sits near them, happy and content, listening to Rose debrief him on her part in the war, grinning at her easily even though he twitches with every loud noise, still so sensitive to the galaxy awakening around him.

Celebration fills the clearing, expanding and overpowering and rapturous: Rey thinks that maybe it’s the sadness in her own heart that makes her especially aware that this celebration came at a cost. She glances up as Karé Kun stumbles from the base, wiping her eyes, and Rey stands as she ricochets past the Jedi; Karé nods, sniffing but offering a timid half-smile, and disappears between the trees. Yolo Ziff pulls off from the group and follows her quietly, an echo of Karé's half smile on his handsome face when he nods at Rey.

If Karé's out here, that means ...

Rey jogs towards the base, surprised when he doesn’t emerge, tousled and snarky and bristling - she walks down the ramp, through the corridors, seeking out a flickering, golden Force signature; she finds him, oddly enough, only twenty feet from her own front door. “Dameron?” She calls out, squinting in the half-light. “Are you coming to the party?”

“Nah, Jedi.” Poe turns and smiles at her, exhausted all around. “Not feeling like a party.”

“Seems like your scene,” Rey jabs, and Poe doesn’t parry like he normally would.

“Guess it does.” Poe shrugs. Rey frowns and walks closer to him until she can lay her hand on his arm, where she’d only just healed him that afternoon. He drops his head, and Rey smiles at him encouragingly, trying to get him to look back up. 

“Did you wanna -” She jerks her head towards her door, and Poe nods, looking exhausted. His own bunk is clear across the base; Karé's room (and Rey has to stop herself from thinking _Karé_ _and Snap’s room, it’s not_ their _room anymore, not anymore_ ) is closer to Rey’s, so she’s not surprised he sought refuge down here. 

She keys in her access code, and Poe follows her inside the small space; she’d been offered a larger bunk as a General, a Jedi, but she liked the little room, felt protected, safe, small inside its walls. Poe leans against the wall near the bed as the doors close behind them, and Rey smiles at him, sits on the bed, and pats the mattress next to her. 

They end up with her feet propped in his lap, his hand wrapped around her ankle, as they trade quiet stories about their days. Poe vacillates between wonder that the war is over, horror that he lost friends that day, and utter exhaustion, but she knows he’s mostly relieved, relieved not to be fighting anymore. 

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do now,” he admits, thunking his head against the durasteel wall behind him. Rey makes a soft noise of sympathy for the definite headache he’ll get doing that and strokes his soft hair near where he clunked his skull. Poe smirks and rolls into the touch, smiling up at her. Their noses are only inches apart, Rey notices, stomach tightening. 

“You can do whatever you want,” Rey points out. “Anything at all.”

“I don’t know, Sunshine.” He’s tired, and he lets slip the nickname he’s only rarely used in the past when they weren’t escaping from near-death (pretty frequent) or bickering to stay sharp (very frequent). “What if all I’m good for is ... is flying, and gettin’ shot at?”

“That’s not true,” Rey whispers fiercely, glaring up at him. Her legs are still thrown over his lap, and his thumb is stirring slow-lazy-warm-hot circles over her bare ankle. “You’re one of the bravest men I’ve ever met, Poe, and you’re good at plenty.”

“Yeah? You still think I’m good for somethin’?” Poe’s smile is lazy and twists spirals in her gut. He sits forward, only slightly, and Rey backs up enough to let him move, but they’re closer than before. He grips her ankle now, and something heavy hovers over them. “That means a lot, coming from you.”

“Yeah, I guess I - yeah,” Rey can’t finish a though, and Poe brushes the backs of his fingers against her jaw. “War’s over, Dameron. We don’t have to fight anymore.”

There’s layers there, coming down to rest over them, layer after layer after -

“No, I guess we don’t,” Poe murmurs, and then he brushes his lips against hers, slow enough she sees it coming, so sudden she isn’t sure what to do. He pulls back to study her face, and something gives him pause because he backs up, rumpled and already apologetic, but Rey grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him back in because when his mouth brushed over hers, her veins crackled like an electricity not designed to kill.

This kiss is hungrier than the last one, and she thrills with it: they’re alive, she thinks deliriously, they’re alive, they’re alive - the war is _over_ and the consequences are still building up, but that’s outside this door, and inside this door, Poe Dameron leans forward as she leans back, and she pulls him down to the bunk. She takes him in her arms and kisses him, and she forgets to worry for half a damn second, and Poe’s laughing into her mouth before they start shedding layers, and she’s laughing when his shirt gets caught on his head, messing with his curls, and he’s laughing when she kicks her leggings off with a humph and a pout, and then he’s lying down on top of her, kissing her again and neither of them are laughing at all when she takes him in her hand and then into her body, a stuttered, relieved, sharp, warm _gasp_ of sensation when Poe Dameron slips inside her, and his hands grip her waist like a lifeline, and all they have to know for an unbroken moment is each other.

* * *

Rey lugs a crate across the hangar, wrinkling her nose at the exertion. Her muscles feel wonky, tense and sore, and she rubs at her left breast with a scowl when she drops the box; she’s been sore all over recently, and so kriffing tired, no matter how much sleep she gets (Finn found her sleeping in the mess yesterday, and carried her back to her room, and she’d had to convince him nothing was wrong even though something ... something certainly doesn’t feel _right_ ). 

Poe, Jannah, and Rose glance up at her from where they’re sprawled out on the floor, eating some kind of stew to counteract the cool air on the new base. The Resistance’s job isn’t over now that the Final Order has been defeated; evil still lurks in corners, and there are more Stormtroopers to save. Finn and Jannah are leading the charge on that front, and - speaking of Finn, he comes up to them, holding two steaming bowls of stew. 

“Got you some lunch, peanut!” Finn declares as the steam wafts towards Rey. “I hope you like meaj-”

She claps a hand to her mouth, heat rushing up in a wave through her system, pivots, and vomits onto the tarmac.

All four of her friends rush to help her, but Poe gets there first; he grips her tightly and helps her stand upright. Rey staggers slightly, the world greying, and she shakes her head, the nausea surging before passing again. “I- I’m fine,” she protests, her limbs shaking or else she’d be pushing at him. “I’m okay.” 

Rose is offering her a cup of water, and Jannah’s talking a mile a minute about something called _starsickness,_ and Finn’s standing back, looking ... concerned. 

“I just need to sit down,” Rey whispers, and Poe hears her. He guides her to a set of crates and lets her go the second she sits. Rey misses the warmth of his body next to hers - but that’s nothing new since she woke up in her bunk alone the day after their victory (the morning after she’d taken him into her no less than three times), and found that he was gone; he’d left BB-8 to tell her he’d brought her breakfast, but he was needed on flight clean-up and had to get going early. It’s been seven weeks, and while they don’t bicker like they used to, instead changing soft, secret smiles that have obviously drawn Finn’s attention, they also haven’t repeated any of what happened in Rey’s bunk that night. Nor have they talked about repeating it.

(Rey’s thought about it. A lot. At least, before she started vomiting all the time)

“I’m fine,” Rey insists, but Jannah’s frowning at her, and Rose rubs her neck.

“You ... you were sick yesterday too,” Rose mutters, and Rey frowns at her. Finn and Poe exchange a worried look. “...At mealtime.”

“The veg-meat smelled horrible,” Rey grumbles, her stomach gurgling at the memory. “Oh, Ri’ia-”

“Breathe.” Poe sits next to her and rubs her back softly. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.” She does so, and while the nausea doesn’t pass entirely, it’s easier to ignore.

“Since when do you think ... any food smells horrible?” Finn asks, his anxiety making him sharper than normal with her. 

“Since I smelled _that,”_ Rey snaps. “I just ... I just need to catch my breath, guys, really-” _leave me alone_ -

“I’ll get a droid for clean-up.” Poe stands, picking up on her unspoken message. He grabs Finn’s arm and tugs him away, and the two walk across the hangar, talking quietly but clearly about her, judging by the way Finn looks back over his shoulder at her. Rey rolls her eyes. 

“Can you ...” Rose pipes up, and Rey glances at her, “...humor me?”

“...About what?”

“Come with me to the MedBay?” Rose holds her hand out, and Rey doesn’t miss the look she and Jannah exchange. “It won’t take long.”

“Ooh-kay.” Rey takes Rose’s hand because she likes holding Rose’s hand, and they walk across the base together, Jannah walking behind them and making idle chit-chat with Rose, whose nervous talking has reared its head.

Rey shrugs and figures that if she’s got some rare, horrible disease, at least near-fatal situations are something she’s familiar with; not like the almost-peace that’s descended over them in the weeks since Exegol.

* * *

Rey finds Poe later that evening, her heart rammed in her throat, and Poe turns to smile at her, dropping the bolts he’d been collecting around a workstation into a storage droid. “What’s up, Sunshine?”

“Uhm.” Rey clears her throat, but her heart doesn’t move. “I-”

“Hey.” Poe’s concerned immediately, crowding in to her, his hand reaching up to her face, and Rey thinks for a moment he’ll touch her cheek, hold her face in his hand like he did the night all this started, make her feel small and precious and wantedsafe _good_ like he had for hours on end - but he brushes some hair out of her face and takes a half-step back. “You okay?”

She nods twice before shaking her head, tears filling her eyes; Rey claps a hand to her mouth, and Poe clearly thinks she’s going to be sick again. “Whoa,” he murmurs, “hey, we can sit if you need to- Rose says you went to the infirmary today?” He sits down on a workbench, and Rey sits next to him, staring at the floor, hand still in front of her mouth when she nods. “Okay. How ... how did that go?”

Poe sounds unfairly wrecked; unfair because that means he _cares,_ that means he _wants to know,_ that means _he doesn’t want something bad to happen to her,_ that means -

“Sunshine?” He whispers her nickname softly, and he brushes his hand across her temple, no doubt to push back more hair from her face. “What’s-”

Rey’s hand drops to her lap, and she whispers two words that will change the galaxy: 

“I’m pregnant.”

After a beat, she looks over at him, and sees Poe frozen, staring at her with something unspoken in his eyes. Then, she says two more words that will change _his_ galaxy:

“It’s yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter2 comin' soon....
> 
> wow wouldn't it be WILD if they fell in love while Rey was pregnant? wouldn't it be WILD if they united over this shared love for their unborn child, who they want to make the galaxy safe for?  
> *dumps all the tropes of fanfic into fic*


	2. Week 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the initial appointment with Kalonia and some information about Poe's past, Rey's pregnancy develops, as do some interesting side effects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An UPDATE and the CHAPTER COUNT UPPED. oops
> 
>  **WARNINGS**  
>  Anxiety about being pregnant
> 
> References to canonical character death (Shara Bey)
> 
> Speculation/headcanon on how Bey died: Bloodburn
> 
> References/discussion to pregnancy complications//mild concern for fetal health
> 
> Mild smut at the end (you can skip when Rey tells Poe how she's feeling in the closet, goes til end of chapter, non-explicit)

* * *

Rey does not know what she expected at this appointment.

The MedBay is just the MedBay after all. She’s ended up here after a few missions went south, but since she discovered her ability to heal, she thought she’d probably avoid it for ... forever. But this is not that kind of appointment, she tells herself, legs pressed together, hands folded in lap as she studies the private exam room. This is ... what’s the word Rose used ... preventative.

Rose had offered to come with her, but Rey shook her head and insisted on going alone. She knows motherhood is a burden; on Jakku, mothers starved first. Died first. Their babies usually died right after them. Things didn’t _grow_ on Jakku; the only things that survived were transplants like herself, brought there when they already had half a chance at making it in the desert.

Rey wraps her arms around her middle and closes her eyes, squeezing her middle so tight she thinks she might break in half. _I won’t let you starve,_ she tells the flicker of life inside her - she’d felt something in the Force for weeks before Rose took her for the blood test, and now she knows what it is. 

_You’ll be safe,_ she promises to the flicker. _No one will touch you. I’ll kill them if they try._

It’s a violent thought, but it doesn’t sound Dark, so Rey won’t let any sort of guilt touch her for thinking it. 

Rey releases her middle with a sigh and scratches her blunt nails against the cushion she’s sitting on; she doesn’t know what she expected from this visit, but this just feels a whole lot like waiting. Which she hates. Which she’s good at.

There’s a knock at the door, and Rey straightens up, one hand still on her middle. “Come in!”

But when the door opens, it’s not Doctor Kalonia; it’s Poe Dameron, his white shirt tucked into his dark pants, his eyes nervous. And she remembers their last conversation, nearly twenty-four Standard hours ago:

_“I’m pregnant... it’s yours.” Rey glanced over at him, and Poe sat very still for a moment before blinking rapidly._

_“Oh,” he murmured, cheeks pink. “Oh, Rey-”  
_

_“I don’t expect anything,” Rey added hastily, worried that he’d be upset. They’d only had that one night together, after all. “Kalonia said I should tell the father, though because ... because we needed to know about any potential problems.”  
_

_That was reasonable. Logical. Poe couldn’t get upset for that: he liked babies. Rey had seen him cooing with refugee infants, holding them for their mothers while they got much needed rest. Poe wouldn’t want a baby to suffer if he could stop it._

_“Right.” Something shifted in Poe’s face. A flash of something. “Do you ... what can I do?”  
_

_Rey made a face. Hadn’t he ... done the thing already? “Uh. I’m not sure. I don’t really know how to ... do any of this,” she admitted, covering her face with her hands. Poe touched her arm softly, his hand warm, and Rey leaned into the contact. “Oh, gods.” She wiped her face and grinned at him, self-deprecating and worried. “I have an appointment with Kalonia tomorrow, and I don’t know what to expect.”_

_“She’ll do a few scans,” Poe answered automatically. “Probably more bloodwork.”  
_

_“You know a lot about this, then?” Rey tilted her head, and Poe turned red again.  
_

_“Not - not like, personally. But, uh, we had ... sex-ed on Yavin 4.” Rey made another face, and he hastened to explain. “Like. Classes in school about this sorta thing-”_

_“They taught you how to have sex in school?” Rey asked, confused, and Poe laughed, slightly hysterical as he pinched his nose and shook his head._

_“No. More like - things about sex. Precautions. Things like that. What to do if you get pregnant, how to avoid getting pregnant- although_ that _clearly didn’t work,” he muttered, almost to himself._

_“Well, I guess I’ll find out more at two tomorrow,” Rey said, shrugging.  
_

_“Appointment’s at 1400?” Poe asked, and Rey nodded. “Alright. Um. Okay.”  
_

And now he’s here. Rey doesn’t think she’s upset to see him, and if she searches her feelings, she isn’t surprised either. Poe Dameron is her friend, and she’d clearly been nervous about all this. And she did share the time with him, so he must have thought she was actively inviting him.

Rey shrugs and smiles at him; her smile brightens when she sees what he’s holding.

“Oh,” she breathes, eyes widening. 

“I .. picked these..” Poe mutters, holding out a slightly ragged bouquet of yellow flowers. “BeeBee wants you to know that he helped.”

“Oooh.” Rey takes them happily, and Poe stands next to her cot awkwardly. “I love these. They look like-”

“Sunshine,” Poe finishes for her, softly, and they exchange a smile. 

“Thank you for coming,” Rey whispers, feeling her ears heat up. “I’m a little ... nervous.”

“I bet.” Poe’s interrupted from whatever he’s about to say by Kalonia knocking on the door and walking in.

“Hello, General Skywalker. And-” She glances at Poe and then snorts. “Why am I not surprised.”

“Hello, Doctor Kalonia,” Poe says, standing up taller. He shuffles his feet, and Kalonia shakes her head at him.

“We’re going to do some tests today, General, if that’s okay.”

Rey nods, feeling nervous again. She hates the MedBay. She hates the smell of it. She hates that some of her friends have died in it. 

She likes Kalonia though, so she goes through the tests and scans without complaint, and at the end, they have to answer questions, which Kalonia keeps track of on her datapad.

“Any health issues in your parents?” Kalonia asks towards the middle of the questionnaire. She looks ... almost apologetic. Rey wonders why, until she doesn’t. 

Her answer is quick: she doesn’t know a lot about her parents, but they seem healthy in her memories; and, her grandfather... _did_ have an unnaturally long life. But it’s Poe’s answer that causes things to go sideways:

“My dad’s got arthritis, high blood pressure,” Poe answers, and he fidgets with something in his pocket. “And ... my mom, she uh ... well, I don’t think bloodburn’s genetic, Doc.”

“No,” Kalonia says softly, “But she _was_ exposed to the conditions that gave her bloodburn while she was pregnant with you, Poe. We don’t ... know the full consequences of that.”

“What?” Rey asks, confused suddenly. She looks up at Poe, whose eyes are suspiciously red. “What is she talking about?”

Bloodburn. It’s a horrible disease. Rumors of it echoed even around Niima, where few would ever touch the stars. It ravaged the system, left no survivors, killed slowly, painfully, brutally. _And Poe’s mother died from it..._

“I’m sorry,” Poe whispers, closing his eyes. Rey doesn’t have to read minds to know he’s beating himself up about something. “Kriff, Rey, I had - I had no intention of - gods -”

“Bloodburn affects the genome,” Kalonia explains softly, diverting Rey’s attention. She frowns, confused still. “It - Poe was born with only mild complications, and relatively healthy, but we always knew that ... given that his mother was still flying in Hyperspace when she was pregnant with him, before her diagnosis ... we always thought it might ... affect his own children.”

“I’m sorry,” Poe whispers, and Rey reaches out for his hand without thinking. To her surprise, he falls to his knees, clinging to her hand, and he presses his face to it. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry-”

“It’s okay,” Rey murmurs, her other hand combing through his curls. “Poe, I trust in the Force. It will be okay.”

She doesn’t know where this newfound confidence comes from, but she means it, and Poe makes a choked, grieved sound.

 _I’ll never have children,_ he told them once, months ago when Finn teased him for babbling at a baby. He hadn’t told them why ... but maybe ... he was afraid. Rey blinks, sad suddenly, and looks to Kalonia.

She’s watching them with an odd expression on her face, like she was working through a difficult equation. Kalonia blinks, and it passes, and Poe eventually stands, looking tired and embarrassed.

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Kalonia promises them both. She tucks the datapad under her arm and nods at them. “You can complete the rest of the questions on the holonet. I do have another appointment at three.”

“Right.” Rey nods and hops down off the cot; Poe steadies her, a strange thing when she’s got more balance than anyone on this base, but it’s a nice touch, a simple one, and she doesn’t scold him for it.

They don’t talk when they leave the office, Poe’s signature still spiky with guilt. When they get to her door, Rey smiles at him, and he shakes his head to something he doesn’t say aloud before smiling back at her, exhausted.

“Do you need anything?”

“I-” Her stomach grumbles, loudly, and Rey groans, putting a hand on her belly.

“Food.” Poe nods and rubs his neck. “I can ... I can get you food.”

“I can walk to the mess on my own,” Rey points out, and Poe turns red again, and she wonders if this is going to be a frequent occurrence. “...but I guess I am tired,” she admits, and Poe brightens.

“I’ll get something for you,” he promises, already jogging down the corridor towards the mess. Rey snorts and shakes her head, mostly amused, before ducking into her bunk where she’s alone with her thoughts and the tiny flicker in the Force, tucked away safely under her palm.

* * *

Being pregnant is honestly the weirdest, mildly grossest feeling.

It is, of course, humbling and wonderful to feel the push in the Force every time she places a hand to her lower belly. It is wonderful to feel her body changing to help grow life inside of her.

It is also horrific.

By week 18 of her pregnancy, Rey is thoroughly weirded out by her body. Her breasts don’t quite ache anymore, but they _are_ sensitive; her belly is permanently rounded out, like she’s eaten more food than she should have in one sitting.

And her moods. Oh. The moods.

She bursts into tears when Rose shows her a refurbished droid, and she pets it for five minutes before wandering off for a snack. She hugs Finn for over a quarter of an hour because his hair smells nice. She falls asleep on Jannah’s shoulder when they’re on patrol and dreams of floating through the Force, time and space and everything stretching out forever and ever in front of her, light multiplying into light before her very eyes -

Also, there’s the matter of how she feels when a certain pilot is within ten feet of her. Poe could be doing anything at all - combing his hair with his fingers, fiddling with BB-8, showing a cadet how to shoot a blaster - and Rey squirms, her face heats, and she makes up an excuse to walk away. 

She’s a third of the way through the pregnancy, and they visit Kalonia weekly or every other week for scans. It’s probably more than they need, but Poe is nervous, something Rey can pick up from across the base as it comes and goes in waves. Everything’s going as it _should,_ but right around Week 18, something awakens in Rey, and it’s definitely not the Force.

It comes to a head one afternoon when Poe helps her carry back some mats from the training room to the storage unit. 

“I really could have carried them myself,” Rey says, stacking the mats as Poe hands them to her.

“I understand.” Poe shrugs and smiles at her. She notices that grey is starting to fleck at the corners of his temples. It looks nice. She pales and presses her thighs together, focusing on the mat she’s stacking. “We don’t really ... get to spend a lot of time together these days.”

He’s been busy, flying around the corners of the galaxy; he holds her every time he leaves, and it’s nice, his hand pressed to the small bump of her stomach, his face pressed into her neck, and Rey loves how he holds her, even if she hates that he leaves right after. And she’s been busy too, helping Finn train as a Jedi, helping Jannah plot out her mission to go save more Stormtroopers. 

“We go see Kalonia together,” Rey points out, standing on her tiptoes to stack the last mat.

Her back seizes as Poe mutters something about _that doesn’t count,_ and she winces. Poe’s on her like a mother-porg a second later.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” Rey mutters, swatting at his hand. Poe’s is pale, drawn, anxious - like he’s been expecting this. Her heart twists in sympathy when she remembers _why_ he’d be so anxious, and it softens her temper. “Hey. I’m okay, flyboy.”

She takes his hand and places it on the bump, smiling at him, knowing that it usually calms him down to feel the evidence that everything is okay, and he can’t somehow find a way to keep punishing himself for things that aren’t his fault. 

He relaxes and ducks his head, lets his thumb rub circles against her stomach; Rey’s eyes flutter shut, and her veins surge with sudden heat.

_Gods._

Poe glances up and sees her reaction. “What-?”

She backs up, bumping into the mats. “Ugh!”

“What’s wrong?” He asks for the second time.

“Nothing.” She grips a mat. “Everything!”

“Everything is wrong?” Poe repeats, eyebrows raised in concern. He takes a half-step towards her, his necklace swinging out from his mostly unbuttoned overshirt, which draws attention to the way his undershirt stretches across his chest, and Rey _knows_ what his chest looks like, and -

“Ugh!” She throws her hands up in the air in irritation. “Gods, you’re so difficult!”

“I am?” Poe looks surprised. He hasn’t been difficult in months. Rey knows this rationally. He has been totally, spectacularly, wonderfully _un_ difficult. Very supportive. Very helpful. 

Very...infuriating.

“I am - tired! All the time!” She snaps, and Poe nods in sympathy.

“I-”

“And! And my breasts! They hurt, Poe!”

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, turning beet red.

“Well they don’t really hurt, not anymore.” Poe doesn’t look like he knows what to do with this information, and later, Rey might feel a _little_ sympathetic. Right now, though. “But, they got bigger!”

“I-”

“If you say _I know,_ I will throw you from an airlock, Dameron!” Rey threatens, jabbing a finger at him. Poe stays quiet. “And another thing. You stand there, all .. all calm and collected. Like nothing bothers you! And I ! I am ... I am so---”

“Angry?” Poe guesses, already apologetic. Rey’s oddly proud that he doesn’t look more worried that the most Force-Sensitive person alive is yelling at him.

“Horny!” Rey shouts, refusing to be embarrassed. Poe coughs, shocked. “I am horny, okay! And - and, you, oh --- oooooh, you- you just-”

“I what?”

“You won’t help me,” Rey mutters, mulish and angry and weirdly hot under the collar. “You won’t.”

“Help you ... with being ... horny?” Poe clarifies, wincing through every word. 

“No! You won’t. You’re very noble,” Rey rolls her eyes. “And helpful. But, let’s face it. Would you fuck me if I asked you to?”

“I, I, I,” Poe splutters, redder than Crait. “I .. I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Sunshi-”

“Why not, huh? I can’t get more pregnant.” It’s very good logic. She knows this. Poe must know this. “Unless, you don’t want to.” That’s fair. “We ... we only did it the once, but ...” She sighs and some of the tension goes out of her body. “It’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?” Poe asks gently. 

“I don’t want ... the only time I’ve had sex was....” Her face heats up unbearably, especially because she can _feel_ Poe’s eyes on her face as she stares at the ground. “Well. Then.”

“That was your first time?” Poe sounds strangled.

“Yeah.” Rey shrugs. “Figures, right?” She pats her hand against her small bump, too small for anyone but them to notice, and grins at him. “It was a lot of fun, but, uh, if you don’t want to-” She shrugs and stands up, faces the door, “I could ask Yolo, I guess, he probably wouldn’t ask any questi-”

“What?” Poe’s focused on her now, and it’s ... more arousing than it should be. He takes a step toward her. “No, no, please - please don’t go to Ziff. Gods.”

“Okay. So ... so if I can’t go to Ziff, and you won’t fuck me, I just - sit here and be horny?” Rey doesn’t _really_ think she’ll have to go to Ziff; especially not now, not when Poe’s attention is wrapping around her, intoxicating, heady, as he keeps walking forward until they’re pressed against each other, her back to the stack of mats. 

“I can help,” Poe promises in a low voice, something conflicted in his eyes before he blinks and smirks at her. “I did promise to help however I could.”

“You did,” Rey says breathlessly, desire surging in her veins as he leans in, eyes flickering between her lips and her eyes, lips, eyes, and then -

He kisses like she remembers in her dreams, firm but gentle somehow, passionate but not uncontrolled, and he tastes better than pickled onions and nut butter (her current favorite thing to eat, something Poe brought for her without question at 0230 a few weeks ago). Poe rocks his hips against hers, and Rey tilts her head back with a gasp of victory, the friction delicious, and Poe pants a laugh into her throat before nuzzling into the skin there and kissing it, too.

“We should lock the door, Jedi,” he whispers, voice low and warm and sending molten heat into her core.

Rey waves a hand at the door, locking it through the Force. “Done and done,” she grumbles, dragging him back down into a kiss.

It’s different this time, and not. Different because once Poe pulls away from her, mouth swollen and red from kissing her, he takes down a mat and helps her lie down on it. Different because once he lifts her tunic, he kisses her belly, soft, reverent enough to make tears come to Rey’s eyes as she stares at the ceiling. Different because he kisses every inch of her before he even lets her touch him, kisses every inch of her twice before he slips into her. Different because when he rocks into her, Rey can only feel _him,_ not elation from a victory, not anxiety from what’s to come next, not wildness at being alive.

It’s different, and it’s not different at all because for every blissful, wonderful, quiet second of it, Rey’s aware that there’s no one in this galaxy she’d share this with besides Poe Dameron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooops now it's three chapters oooops it'll probably have to be four or five OOOOOPs.
> 
> thanks for reading, frands


	3. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a scare lands Rey in the Med-Bay, Poe reveals an intensity she hasn't seen before; later, many of their friends bring them gifts, as Rey's second trimester comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO
> 
> I hope you are all still interested in this little post-TROS fic. 
> 
> Notes : going off of Star Wars time here! A week is 5 days and a month is 7 of those weeks!
> 
>  **Warnings**  
>  Continued pregnancy stuff  
> Grief  
> Anxiety  
> Gentle smut at the end, very brief! (If you end up skipping it - it's v obvious when it starts!) please read the last fewish lines because it's IMPORTANT to the plot

* * *

(29 Weeks)

“You certainly aren’t making things easy on me,” Kalonia chides, and Rey shrugs with the arm Kalonia isn’t spraying a bacta-cast onto.

“Baby’s okay, though?” Rey asks timidly, and Kalonia pauses in her ministrations to smile at Rey gently.

“You were shot in the arm, Master Skywalker, not in the stomach.” After she finishes the cast, she summons one of the round, soft-blue OBG droids towards them. “But let’s check on that baby anyway, okay?”

“Okay,” Rey whispers, cheeks heating up.

It’s ridiculous to be so worried, she knows that; but she’s 29 weeks pregnant, and her entire body seems to be on constant alert for _something_ to go wrong. A blaster-bolt to the arm four months ago would have been an event she shrugged off - but now she can’t separate a coil of anxiety in her stomach long enough to accept what she can tell in the Force (that the baby was entirely unharmed by the injury).

Rey feels her nose scrunch as OBG-12 spreads the jelly for the scan on her fully rounded tummy, which now bears some stripes that surprised Rey - not in a bad way - when she saw them.

(Rey’s first stretch marks came when she was with the Resistance for six months, eating fairly regularly and not scrambling to survive half as much - her stretch marks are a happy memory from that time, so she doesn’t see why the ones she’s gained in pregnancy should be any different)

Poe certainly doesn’t have any complaints, unless she’s very much mistaken. 

And, speaking of that difficult man:

The OBG droid is projecting the ultrasound as a mini-holo for Kalonia and Rey to examine when there’s a banging on the door.

“I wonder who that could be?” Kalonia asks dryly, and they exchange a secret smile that Rey doesn’t fully understand but likes all the same.

“No idea,” Rey answers, giggling when they can hear the voice shouting on the other side.

“- _Rey Skywalker, I swear to the Maker if no one tells me you’re okay in the next fifteen_ -”

“Oh, let him in,” Rey groans, tilting head back so her cheek can rest on the examination chair’s soft pillow. 

Kalonia signals to a med-droid, and Poe barges in, eyes wild; his necklace has swung out of his tan shirt, and the ring has disappeared over his shoulder, and his hair seems to be standing on end.

“Oh, kriff.” Poe barrels over to Kalonia and Rey, the former of which mutters _incoming, boys,_ and uses her foot to scoot some droids out of the way so Poe can collapse at Rey’s side, right onto his knees. Rey winces in sympathy as that didn’t look like it could have felt too good, and Poe clearly mistakes the wince for one of her own pain.

“How bad is it?” He asks to both her and Kalonia; his hands reach out timidly to the arm wrapped in the bacta-cast, and he hisses between his teeth before leaning in to study the holo-sound anxiously. “How’s the-”

“The baby is fine, General,” Kalonia says calmly, and Rey shoots her a grateful look. “As is Master Skywalker.”

“I’ll court martial him,” Poe says, his tone darker now as he scowls at Rey’s cast. “He shouldn’t be on base, the menace-”

“He’s a seventeen-year-old cadet whose blaster _misfired,_ Poe,” Rey chides, reaching out with her uninjured hand to touch his hair gently. Poe relaxes into the touch, and his eyes are filled with something that makes her gut tighten; it’s almost painfully intense, the way he looks at her, and Rey can’t make heads nor tails of it. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He could have killed someone!” And Poe’s tense again, surging to his feet. Rey sighs and rests her hand on her stomach, deciding it’s best if she just studies the holo-sound of her baby instead of watching the father of her child lose his karking shit. “He could have killed _you,_ Rey, or our baby.”

Rey tenses this time: it’s the first time he’s called the life that’s growing inside her _our_ baby. She doesn’t mind it at all - it’s how she thinks of the child - but Poe clearly thinks he’s made a mistake because he backtracks.

“The baby,” he corrects quietly, and she glances over at him to see him staring at the holo-sound with a pained longing. One hand reaches out and brushes against the corner of the holo, a staticky blue interruption, and he clears his throat. “The baby _is_ okay, right, doc?”

“Perfectly fine,” Kalonia reports. “Heartrate’s a little elevated, but that could be because mom’s stressed. We’ll keep an eye on it.” Poe nods, jaw tight.

“I stopped it before it could hit the baby,” Rey adds, her maternal pride kicking in. She had _saved_ her baby. Unlike so many mothers on Jakku - Rey was able to _save_ her child. “Blocked most of it in the Force, and the rest of it, well, with this-” She waves her arm around, beaming, showing off the cast.

Kalonia puts a hand to the bridge of her nose, like she’s exasperated, and then -

“You risked your own life?” Poe barks, and Rey looks up at him in confusion. “Gods, Rey, _you_ could have died-”

“I wouldn’t die from a blaster-shot to the arm,” Rey snaps back, cheeks flushing. “I’m not some helpless weakling all of a sudden, Poe!”

“You could have been seriously hurt-”

“The baby is _fine,_ and that’s what matters-”

“You should _both_ be fine, and this base is too dangerous-”

“-I am _not_ having this argument again!”

There’s a beeping on OBG-12’s interface, and Kalonia stands up tall and points at Poe. “General Dameron, outside, _now._ ” Poe freezes, looking horrified, as Kalonia indicates the readings that have shifted. “This is not good for Master Skywalker’s blood pressure, and-”

“Fuck.” Poe bites the word out, drags his hands through his hair, and then nods miserably. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to Rey, already backing up towards the door. He holds his hands up as though surrendering, and stares one last, long time at the holo-sound. “Fuck, I’m so sorry-”

And then he’s gone.

“Ugh.” Rey drops her head back to the soft pillow, unsure why her eyes are suddenly filled with tears. “That man-”

“It’ll be alright, Rey.” Kalonia surprises her by reaching for her hand and squeezing gently. Gods, Rey appreciates the gentle touch, and she smiles at the older doctor as she squeezes back. Kalonia even chuckles. “I remember when General Organa was pregnant.” Neither of them say the outcome of the pregnancy, as it would be too painful for so many reasons. “She refused to slow down for a second.”

“I bet she didn’t,” Rey laughs fondly, tearing up more at the thought of her beloved Master.

“No,” Kalonia shakes her head, grinning at some memory Rey can’t see. OBG-12 powers down the holo-sound and rattles away as Kalonia starts to wipe up the gel from Rey’s belly. “No one expected her to - except poor old Han. I swear he went grey by her fifth month.” They both laugh at that image. “But, it’s hard to tell hot-blooded pilots who are used to being in control not to over-worry about their wives, who they’ve so convinced themselves are as delicate as they are precious.” 

Rey smiles at the thought of Han fussing over a pregnant, grumpy Leia - and then her smile drops.

“Well, it’s a little different for me and Poe,” Rey points out, telling herself she doesn’t sound sad. “I’m not Poe’s wife.”

Kalonia doesn’t say anything, only helps pull Rey’s tunic down and helps sit her upright. Rey puts her arms around her belly protectively, and finds herself still explaining, oddly defensive about Kalonia’s silence.

“He just worries about the baby,” Rey continues, “which is nice because it’s nice to not be alone, caring about the baby,” and truthfully, the whole base seems invested, joyously so, in her pregnancy, “but if I hadn’t been pregnant - with _his_ child - I don’t think Poe would have kicked the door down to see if I was okay.”

She’s crying by the end of it, really crying, and she doesn’t know why. Kalonia looks at her for a long second as she hiccups and wipes at her eyes angrily on the chair - _damn hormones,_ Rey tells herself - before grabbing some tissue for Rey to use.

Digging around in her pocket for a second, Kalonia emerges with a cacao square, which Rey accepts with a stilted inhale, eyes wide. 

The doctor pats her on the shoulder. “Tell me when you figure it out.” And then she leaves so Rey can get re-dressed, but her head spins as she slides her leggings back on, not sure what Kalonia was even talking about.

* * *

(36 Weeks)

A month later, and the bacta-cast is a distant memory, as is Poe’s odd reaction to it. They’ve settled into a normal routine, sharing Poe’s bunk (it just makes sense, Rey tells herself as she falls asleep next to him for the seventy-ninth night in a row, if something goes wrong in the night, it’s good for her to be near someone), walking around base together, and still working to rebuild the Republic.

Her friends seem to be increasingly invested in the pregnancy, and there’s an unexpected influx of gifts around the end of her second trimester, when her belly is so protruded everyone officially knows that the last Jedi, the last Palpatine, and the new Skywalker is with child. 

Yolo and Iolo come first, knocking on the door and holding up a crib they built from timber near the base. Iolo made the structure, and Yolo painted it, beautiful, gorgeous images of flowers and forest scenes and baby animals. They put it in the corner, clapping Poe on the back loudly (shouting things like, “ _General Daddy!”_ and, “ _First one to settle down, who coulda guessed?!”_ ) and even lifting him on their shoulders. 

Rey scolds them slightly, only just, gasping in shock when Poe’s head hits the ceiling of their room, one hand on her belly, one hand reaching out, prepared to catch Poe in the Force when they inevitably drop him - “Boys!” She says firmly, and Yolo and Iolo drop Poe immediately, patting his head before coming over to Rey and hugging her tenderly, gently, one of them on each side; she lets them put their hand on the roundedness of her belly, and Yolo’s misty-eyed when Iolo finally pulls him away. 

“ _Boys_?” Poe asks her teasingly, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and brushing his lips against her temple. Rey snorts and elbows him, and Poe laughs and kisses her cheek. “You’re going to be quite the mother, Skywalker,” he whispers, and Rey flushes pink-hot-proud all over.

Jannah’s next, bringing a doll she made by hand from scraps of fabric, the face small and sweet, and Rey coos when she sees it, utterly delighted as she takes the doll in her arms and holds it tight to her chest.

“It isn’t much,” Jannah says, self-conscious, “but we used to make dolls like this for the new children-” And Rey shakes her head ferociously.

“I always wanted a doll growing up,” Rey whispers, “I made one myself to look like a pilot, but she’s-” Rey sighs happily, “She’s perfect.”

Rey hugs Jannah for a long time, and both women hold each other tightly - Rey thinks it makes sense. They’re both tough, and strong, and warriors: it’s easier to be vulnerable around someone just like you.

Rose Tico builds a customized baby monitor that can pick up frequencies from parsecs away, “For when you two idiots are off on missions and want to know how the baby’s doing,” and it’s Poe who cries that time, cradling the monitor before wrapping Rose up in a tight hug, his chin on top of her head.

“My parents would have loved something like this,” Poe whispers later when they’re in bed. “They only got holos from my abuelo when it was safe to transmit messages.”

The monitor is in a place of honor at the head of the bed, on a table where they could both reach it, and the crib is in the corner, now with the doll from Jannah and a blanket from Kaydel tucked in it, and Rey thinks - so deliriously happy - that this feels like a real, actual home now.

She kisses Poe drowsily, and doesn’t notice when he stiffens in surprise (they really only kiss when they’re about to have, or are in the middle of having, sex), but he slings an arm around her and kisses her back, and Rey smiles, curling her toes in her socks. 

Finn brings stories, wild, magnificent stories, from his time training as a Jedi. It’s easier for him to travel right now, so he’s been jetting off around the galaxy, helping where he can; he lays his head on Rey’s belly and whispers stories to the baby, and Rey can feel the child jumping with joy at the sound of Finn’s voice.

Rey often falls asleep like that, lying down with Finn curled around her, his head listening to her bump, one hand on Finn’s head, one hand on her belly, and her dreams when she sleeps like this are the most vivid she has.

(Her dreams - gods, her dreams now: she sees the galaxy deepening, sees all of time and space in a moment, sees the birth of Vader, sees the grief of Obi-Wan, sees the construction of temples, sees the collapse of the Order, sees Finn fighting, sees Jannah working, sees Rose tinkering, sees Poe worrying, sees Poe’s birth, sees Poe smile, sees _Poe_ -)

The most precious gift comes when Rey senses a presence on the other side of the door, hovering anxiously. 

Poe has his glasses on - and gods, he looks so handsome with them on, his glasses and his beard making him look so distinguished even as he reclines in soft-pants and a sleep shirt, flipping through a holonovel on their bed - and he looks up from what he’s reading to frown when she stands up.

“What is it?” He asks quietly, and Rey shakes her head, holding a hand up as she slips to the door.

When it opens, no one’s there, but Rey pokes her head out into the hallway and sees the person walking away.

“Karé?”

Karé turns, and Rey sees that the other woman is holding something tightly. “Sorry,” Karé says, almost guiltily, and Rey frowns, taking another step out into the hallway. The durasteel floor is cold on her bare feet - Poe keeps their room warm, something Rey has never fully appreciated before now - and she shivers, standing in her loose nightgown. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You didn’t.” Rey tilts her head and smiles at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Karé laughs and her shoulders droop; it’s only been six months since her husband died. 

Rey barely knew Snap, and she’s missed him distantly this whole time - it’s worse for Poe, she knows, who saw him as a brother (and she’s held him when he cried for him) - so she can’t imagine how Karé feels, who lost the love of her life, her partner, her equal.

Rey pushes the thought away before she can do something selfish like cry. 

“Karé?” Poe’s in the doorway now, and Rey reaches for his hand subconsciously. Poe’s hand is warm, and Rey fights the urge to wiggle into his side and get as warm as possible. “Hey.”

“Hey, Dameron.” Karé sighs and then walks towards them, haltingly. “I, um, this is, uhm, from Sn-Temmin’s homeworld. Uh - Wedge h-had it made, for us, at our w-wedding, and-”

She holds out a tangle of objects - Rey can see a starship, an X-Wing, a sun, a moon, and a pilot - and Rey isn’t quite sure what it is, but Poe sucks his breath in, almost pained.

“Karé, we can’t take this from you-”

“He’d want someone to use it,” Karé whispers, and a tear tracks down her dark skin. “And … and I - I’m never going to-”

Poe lets go of Rey and holds her, the connected objects crushed between them. Rey waits for a moment and then walks over, rubbing between Poe’s shoulder blades to let him know she’s there (and she hates that Poe still flinches at unknown touches, a year and a half after Starkiller) before wrapping her arms around Karé.

She doesn’t know what it is Karé’s given them, but given the way Poe’s acting, it’s something important, painfully so.

Poe walks Karé back to her room after that, and Rey brings the gift inside - Poe’s gone for almost two hours, and she has plenty of time to examine each hand-carved item in that time.

When he comes stumbling back in, around 0100, Rey’s still awake, and Poe takes the objects from her, kisses her forehead, and then goes to hang it up above the crib. Rey follows him and watches as he lets it spin; she can see tears dried to his cheeks, and it makes her heart hurt (not in the way it’s been hurting lately with all the indigestion she’s been having, but a real, actual ache). 

She leans in on tip-toe to kiss his cheek, above his beard, and Poe sighs before wrapping his arms around her, holding as tight as he can with her belly between them.

“I-” he whispers, but then stops, oddly stiffening. Rey doesn’t think much of it, and rests her head on his shoulder. 

“What is it?”

“A mobile,” Poe answers, relaxing slightly. “They’re - well, it was supposed to be for Karé and Snap’s baby, but after-” his voice breaks, horribly, and Rey makes a soft noise in her throat before pulling away to put her hands on either side of his face.

She strokes her thumbs over his cheekbones - a gesture she learned from him - and Poe offers her a sad, half-smile before putting his hands on her belly, stroking his thumbs over the roundedness. Rey leans in for a kiss, and he obliges, and when his palm is flat against her belly, it happens:

The baby kicks.

Poe pulls back as though it had _really_ kicked him, and he gasps in shock. Rey, who’s been feeling plenty of those super-fun-not-at-all-uncomfortable kicks to her organs the last few weeks, only grins at him and laughs. 

“Wow,” Poe whispers, his sadness momentarily forgotten (or at least tucked away somewhere Rey can’t see it, a thought that makes her unbearably sad). 

Another kick.

“Oh, hi, baby-” Poe leans down to whisper to the bump, and Rey laughs because she can tell Poe can’t decide whether he should laugh or cry.

“That’s it,” Poe whispers, looking up at her, eyes shining, “oh gods, Rey, the baby-”

“ _Our_ baby,” she corrects softly, placing one hand over his, and the other on his cheek. 

There’s a brief pause and then:

Poe surges upwards, kissing her belly once before kissing her collarbone, her neck, her jaw, her cheeks, her nose, and finally her lips. He kisses her like he’s starving for it, and Rey gasps and kisses back just as fiercely, her blood thrumming in her veins.

They stumble for the bunk somehow - Rey would have no problem if their chosen surface was the floor or the wall, but when she whispers that to Poe, he hisses, almost offended - and Poe navigates her so she’s kneeling on the bed, and he’s standing behind her.

“Gods, Rey,” he murmurs as he kisses along her spine, his hands running along her body, teasing and toying and sosososomuch _everything_ \- “Gods, I-”

He cuts himself off again, and Rey glances over her shoulder at him, almost worried, but sees he’s fumbling with the fastening of his pants, so she chalks it up to distraction.

And she herself is _very_ distracted moments later when he sinks into her and begins to move; her cries aren’t smothered by anything at all as she grips the sheets and tries to maintain a level of composure, but Poe’s lithe hips keep up a rhythm guaranteed to drive her mad, and his clever fingers work at her until she seizes and nearly _screams_ with the feeling of it all.

Poe finishes not long after she does, and he cleans her up with a care that goes beyond duty as she lies back against the pillows. He falls asleep before she does for once, and Rey strokes the backs of her fingers against his cheek as he dozes.

Half an hour after his eyes close, Rey feels drowsy enough to sleep as well. 

And then it happens.

Something that’s _been_ happening for weeks now, tugging at the edge of her consciousness. Rey closes her eyes and focuses on the feeling, reaches out for the soft glow in the Force, the signature of her child, of Poe’s child, and pushes into it delicately.

The feeling passes with a rush of sensation not unlike plummeting mid-flight and Rey sags against the pillows, clearing her throat as her eyes slip shut and she falls into a darkness deeper than sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun dun  
> I wonder what **that** was?
> 
> Stay tuned for chapter 4, "Complications," and I hope you're ready for a **Poe Pov!!!** (and sorry that I upped the chapter count from 3 to 5 because I'm ... insatiable!) 
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!


	4. complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's pregnancy develops with unexpected side effects and consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **STRONG WARNING**  
>  Pregnancy complications  
> Discussions of potential fetal death  
> Discussions of potential maternal death  
> (See end note for extended/spoiler warning)  
> Angst

(38 Weeks)

Life on base continues like normal.

Well, the new normal. 

Weight’s gathering around Rey’s middle now, skin stretching undeniably over the roundness of her belly. She sips protein shakes until she feels too queasy to keep going - the nausea’s back, suddenly, and not like it was before. Before, it felt like barrelling in the Falcon with the grav improperly fixed.

Now, it feels like something else. Like a sickness.

She loses mass from her legs and arms: it’s her muscle, Kalonia explains haltingly. After all, Rey’s never gone this _slow_ in her entire life. People (Iolo, and Yolo, mainly) lift things for her, bring her things. Women (mainly mothers) beg her to sit, encourage her to lean back and rest. Finn fusses over her with the slightest provocation, and Rose eyes cadets grumpily if they get too close to Rey and the bump.

Poe holds her almost subconsciously - a hand on her elbow while she climbs the ramp to the Falcon to do maintenance, a hand on her lower back when they walk through the corridors, his arms tight around her while they sleep - and Rey wants to feel stifled by it. She’s stifled by a lot of the rest of it, after all, growing more and more tired of people helping her, and lifting things for her, and bringing things to her, and fussing over her.

But it’s different with Poe, somehow. Everything he does is so impossibly tender, his face soft and open when he runs his fingers through her hair, tracing a path down her neck, between the valley of her growing breasts, to the swell that houses the flicker of light that will be their child in only a few months’ time, Force-willing. 

He’s gentle with her in a way that threatens to split her open, his movements telegraphed, his intentions clear, his hope and joy for their child so evident in everything he does.

Rey watches them one night when Poe must think she’s already asleep. She’s propped up on pillows to counteract the indigestion she’s been plagued with on top of her nausea, and Poe’s pressed his nose against her side, his head on a pillow, one hand on her belly, thumb stroking back and forth against her protruding navel. 

“ _Te amo,_ ” he whispers to the bump, “ _te amo, te amo._ ”

She smiles at the aching softness of his voice (her only other option is to cry), but there’s a stirring in the Force, a push outwards, like a gentle tide, drawing Poe in. The flicker of life inside her pulls him in, whispering back not the words themselves, but the feeling of them, the glow of it washing over father as well as mother, and Rey can’t hide the gasp that escapes her lips.

Poe’s crying suddenly, and doesn’t hear her; even if he’s no Jedi, Poe’s been connected to the Force in ways she can’t understand his whole life, thanks to the tree on his farm, the one she’s heard so many stories about. 

Maybe it’s that connection that lets him hear their child whisper through the Force, the promise of life inside her surging around him with as much yearning to meet him as he has for it. 

Rey opens her eyes completely to watch them when she notices.

It’s his Force signature. Green but gold, softly pulsing from him - it’s the same signature she feels growing inside of her. They meld together in the Force, her child ( _his child_ , _their child_ ) and Poe, blending and harmonizing and building in such painful beauty that she wonders how she didn’t see it before. That must be why she finds it so easy to be around him, even now when her pregnancy is so difficult and her exhaustion is so intense. 

Because the life that grows inside her is half-him, and as much as there still is that she needs to learn about him, Rey knows the heart that beats inside Poe Dameron is good. She knows he’ll care for their child. He’ll be a father, where she had none. He’ll help her, where she doesn’t know. He’ll be there.

For their child.

(Somewhere deep down, where Rey still feels selfish, still feels Dark, Rey wishes he’d stay for her).

(40 Weeks)

Rey worries that her exhaustion shows on her face. It feels like she hasn’t slept in months, and maybe she hasn’t. There are times when all she knows is darkness, but that only happens when necessary.

It’s more that: 

When she sleeps, the entire galaxy stretches in front of her. 

She can see it. Every second of it. It staggers out before her, loping and circling and dying and growing and every molecule of her aches in the shadow of it all. The Dark calls to her, the Light screaming out to push it back.

Anakin, Obi-Wan, fighting.

( _No one can kill a Jedi_ )

Qui-Gon, falling.

( _So this is how democracy dies_ )

Padme, short but so tall somehow.

The handmaids. Willing to die, so their queen could live.

( _No Anakin, No!_ )

Ahsoka, walking down the steps.

( _With thunderous applause_ )

Jess, escaping.

( _Red-Five, standing by_ )

Poe Dameron repeats those words in the shade of a tree barely taller than he is.

Luke. 

( _Biggs. Oh gods, Biggs_ )

Muran. Always Muran, screaming, shattering into dust, just beyond reach, just beyond help.

( _EJECT! MURAN -_ )

The temples are built.

( _No one can kill a Jedi_ )

The temples fall.

( _I killed them all_ )

A saber through Han’s chest.

( _I’ll come back for you, sweetheart_ )

Zorii watches her planet burn.

Shara Bey dies.

Poe Dameron is born.

Finn’s parents fight the Troopers that steal him anyway.

Lando Calrissian collapses, sobbing, on a stardeck fifteen thousand parsecs away from the home someone promised him was safe. His daughter is gone.

(He finds her, years later. But he finds her)

The run at Starkiller Base.

The run at the Death Star.

A Jedi master with her pupils.

The end of the Jedi.

The birth of the Jedi.

Poe’s eyes, in the face of her child.

( _Te amo. Te amo, te amo_ )

Rey sees it, every inch of it, past and present and future blurring together. Everything that ever was, that ever will be. She sees it.

She sees herself in childbirth. 

( _Hello, little one. Mama loves you_ )

She sees herself dying.

( _Rey, baby, please, please open your eyes, oh gods, please don’t leave me, you gotta fight this, please, Sunshine, I’m begging you, we need you, I need you, oh god, ohgodohgodohgod, please don’t be - holy - oh my g- Rey? Rey! Help - help us - oh fuck - Rey!_ )

She can no longer tell if they’re separate visions.

(43 Weeks)

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Rey asks quietly, sitting for her scan. 

Thirteen weeks left. She can do this.

“Hmm.” Kalonia looks up from her notes and eyes the projected image of the fetus. Rey smiles at the sight of it, a comforting anchor - she’s more tired than normal it seems today, and it’s nice to see what part of her has been calling The Flicker - until Kalonia clears her throat worriedly.

“Your vitals are better than last week,” Kalonia begins, and Rey frowns. 

_Why would that make her so upset?_

“That’ll make Poe happy,” Rey jokes. 

He had been less than happy to hear her oxygen levels were slightly depleted, and she still swears that she caught him eyeing the oxygen tanks kept in storage for long-distance flights. There had been even less to do with her wonky blood pressure, other than more bedrest, and Poe had been incredibly diligent in sitting with her (even though she could tell he was vibrating out of his skin having to sit still for over an hour while awake).

Kalonia offers her a small smile before eyeing the scan, and then her notes, one last time. “But the baby’s vitals…” She trails off.

“The baby’s vitals are _what_?” Rey asks, panic immediately setting in.

She does not think of the babies who’d never cried buried in the sand on Jakku. She does not think of the girls who could not bear the children they were forced to carry, buried in the sand on Jakku. She is no longer of Jakku. She is a Skywalker. She will have her child. She will know her child. She will love her child.

“The heart,” Kalonia says haltingly. “It’s - it’s showing up weaker than before. It’s nothing we didn’t expect with the father’s medical history, and we can keep an eye on it, just-”

The doctor’s words fade into fuzzy nothingness as Rey loses concentration on the moment and focuses on the Flicker -

She pushes. Nudges really. 

Nothing accepts it. 

The panic worsens.

Kalonia’s still talking, but Rey _heaves_ this time, pushes with all her strength, and something floods from the top of her spine downwards, flowing into the child, and she doesn’t know if it will be immediate, but -

Kalonia stops talking.

“What was that?” She asks softly.

“What was what?” Rey asks, holding onto consciousness.

She barely succeeds.

“What was that?” Kalonia repeats, barking the words as she stands and jabs at the scan. “What did you do?”

“I-” Rey blinks and sets her jaw. “Nothing.”

“Rey.” Kalonia wipes a hand down her face, and Rey stiffens in surprise. Kalonia rarely uses her name. “Please. Explain what just happened to me because what _I_ saw suggests -” She stops and looks Rey in the face.

Rey sighs and begins to talk.

* * *

Poe paces in the corridor, bleary-eyed from the last patrol. He’d taken a double so Jess could recover from her bout of Batuu-flu, and that means he was late for the weekly appointment with Kalonia.

Part of him wishes he’d knocked on the door, or asked a droid to inch into the exam room to ask if he could come in, but he doesn’t want to stress Rey out. She didn’t expect him back in time, after all, had accepted as peacefully as he could have hoped when he told her he’d be out on patrol and not by her side when she met with Kalonia.

She doesn’t need him. He knows this. Not like he needs her. He’s not angry about it. She’s letting him be a part of their child’s life, after all. She’s given him so much. Why should he be selfish enough to ask for her heart, too?

Poe sighs and drags a hand down his face, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. He tugs on the back of his curls, which are growing in now that the war is over and there’s less of a concern around keeping things high and tight - Rey likes his curls, something that makes him preen, something that makes him want to grow them out as far as they’ll go. 

_Gods, they should be out by now._ It’s nearing 1630, and the appointment should have ended at 1600. A droid had wandered by forty minutes ago, warbling to a droid around the corner that the doctor would need something, but he hadn’t caught it in the blur of Binary. 

Figuring if it were a super-emergency, someone would be running around by now, Poe sinks into a chair and clasps his hand, his knee immediately bouncing at the speed of light while he waits.

A second later, the doors to the exam room open, and Poe nearly leaps to his feet so he can get to Rey’s side faster.

But it isn’t Rey who walks through the doors. It’s Kalonia, looking pale and wan. 

“Where is she?” Poe asks when the doors shut with no sign of Rey. “What’s wrong?”

“At ease, General,” Kalonia counters with the ghost of a smile, one that does nothing to settle his nerves. 

He locks his hands behind his back, locks his knees (unlocks them so he won’t pass out).

“Is Rey okay?” Poe asks as calmly as he can, which is to say, not calm at all. “The baby, is the baby-”

Kalonia holds up a hand, and he stops talking.

“Have you noticed anything odd about the Jedi Master recently? Anything … unusual?”

 _We have sex twice a day and she never wants to eat anymore and I don’t think she’s actually sleeping and she gets heartburn like she’s swallowed a white dwarf and she cries when the wind blows the wrong way and she’s the most beautiful, incredible person I’ve ever met and it’s gonna rip me apart in half a second_ -

“Not anything … more unusual since the last time we spoke, doc,” Poe says after a moment. “She’s real tired. More tired than … I thought people got, but … I’m sorta new to this too, and-”

“I know why she’s been so tired.”

 _Because she’s pregnant,_ Poe waits for her to say. _Idiot._

That’s not what Kalonia says.

“It appears the baby’s development,” and she looks guilty, gods, that can’t be good, “is in fact hindered by … what I assume is the genome’s exposure to bloodburn.”

Poe’s knees buckle, and with surprising agility for someone her age, Kalonia’s at his side in a heartbeat, guiding him to sit down. 

“Easy, General. Easy.”

“How bad is it?” Poe croaks, eyes already flooded with tears. “Oh gods, is it - is it too late-”

“Calm down, General Dameron.” She places a hand between his shoulder blades and guides him through some controlled breathing until he nods. “What is unusual is what I saw on the scan after I informed your partner of the delayed development.”

In another branch of the multiverse, Poe’s got his shit together enough that he corrects Kalonia for calling Rey his partner. He’s not that lucky. But, here and now, he’s too fraught with anxiety to be able to speak, so he just waits for Kalonia’s next statement as he focuses his eyes on a random point on the floor.

“It… well, it appears that Master Skywalker has been Force-healing the baby for the last however many months.”

“What?” Poe mumbles the word.

“I didn’t notice it until today,” Kalonia continues, “when, like I told you, the baby’s vitals showed up weak on the scan. Master Skywalker’s were strong.”

 _Well, that’s good,_ Poe thinks distantly, in the corner of his mind still allowed thought. 

“But, when I pointed it out - the baby’s vitals strengthened… and Master Skywalker’s weakened drastically.”

There’s an odd ringing in his ears. It must be a siren nearby. _Is Blue Squadron on call? Should he suit up?_

“Sorry?” Poe clears his throat and tries to ignore the ringing. “I don’t - I’m not following-”

“It was like I watched the baby’s heart tissue build up, _on_ the scan, in the moment. And … in that moment, Master Skywalker got … colder. Her vitals dropped, drastically. She very nearly fell unconscious.”

“I don’t understand.”

The words fall flat between them.

It feels like a lie. Poe isn’t stupid, after all. Part of him very much understands.

“Rey is putting her life-force into the fetus,” Kalonia says as gently as she probably can, and Poe’s entire body goes cold. “The pregnancy… it’s draining her, Poe. Horribly.”

_She’s been so tired, so sick - I - I chalked it up to normal symptoms like an idiot - why didn’t I trust my gut, we could have caught this sooner -_

“But we caught it,” Poe says weakly, “I mean, you caught it, doc. Rey knows now.” Kalonia covers his hands with one of her own, and he realizes he’s clenching them together so tightly his fingernails are drawing blood in the meat of his palm. “She - she knows it’s hurting her - she’s been doing it on accident, right? The Force-healing? It’s been subconscious, so … so, she knows now that -”

“From what I remember of Luke Skywalker,” Kalonia breaks in, not unkindly, “I don’t think this power is subconscious. Quite the opposite. I think it requires a good deal of devotion. Intention. Concentration.”

“Why isn’t she telling me this?” Poe stands again, and Kalonia pulls her hands away from him so he can. He starts to pace, tugging at his hair anxiously. “Why isn’t Rey telling me this herself, she - she wouldn’t want me to know shit like this without-”

“Master Skywalker asked me to talk to you. She’s … resting.” Kalonia eyes the door worriedly, and Poe’s throat tightens in panic.

“Resting?”

“Healing the fetal heart took a lot out of her, as unfocused as her efforts were given the circumstances. She’s resting, and she wanted me to … tell you everything.”

“And that’s everything?” Poe pauses to look at Kalonia, who’s sitting with her withered hands clasped on her lap. “Right?”

He hates how hopeful he sounds.

“No.” Kalonia sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, any way but bluntly. I told Master Skywalker the same thing, but she didn’t respond well, and it … increased her need for rest-”

“Tell me,” Poe grits out, cutting the doctor off. He’ll be embarrassed about it later. “Gods, please, just tell me-”

“At this point what Rey has been doing …” Kalonia stands and walks over to him, places a hand on his arm. Squeezes softly. Reassuringly.

He doesn’t feel reassured.

“What she’s done - I don’t think it’s been enough to save the baby.” 

He thought his body was cold before, but now he knows better. It feels like he’s been drop-kicked off an AT-AT on Hoth.

“...but I think it has been enough to kill _her_.”

The world drops out from underneath him, and he staggers back, dragging his hand through his hair again, tugging at the curls so sharp prickpoints of pain light up along his scalp to distract him. 

“There’s a chance that she might be able to save the fetus, but at this point, she’ll save the baby’s life at the cost of her own.”

“So…” His voice breaks immediately. “So you’re telling me either the woman I lo-- either - either Rey dies, on the off-chance my baby can live -- or my … _our_ baby dies?”

“You two have a lot to talk about.” Kalonia shifts uncomfortably and eyes the door. “And she does want to talk to you. But she wanted the first part to come from me.”

“I-” Poe shakes his head and sinks against the wall, “Oh gods, this - what do we do?”

“Talk to each other.” Kalonia folds her hands. Unfolds them. “Support each other. These next two months won’t be easy, General Dameron. And I’m sorry.”

She walks away, and Poe grips his hair in both hands, tilts forward so he can breathe, in through his nose, out through his mouth, until his nose is too plugged from crying to do that anymore, and then it’s just in and out through his mouth as his tears splash against his uniform, against the floor. 

After three minutes of what feels like an eternity-long-self-destruct, Poe stands, wipes his face, blows his nose on a tissue offered by a med-droid, and then walks down the corridor. He knocks, three times, and places his hand flat against the durasteel.

“Yes?”

He closes his eyes and leans into the sound of Rey’s voice, as muffled as it is by the door. 

“It’s me,” he says as steadily as he can. Poe wants to be strong for her. He has to be strong. He can be strong for the person he loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Spoiler warning)  
> The pregnancy provides Rey with a difficult choice - maintain the pregnancy and continue to Force-heal the fetus at the risk of her own health, and potentially her death, or lose the pregnancy/fetus. Poe hears this news and reacts poorly with intense grief. 
> 
> [If you need to hear it - yes, this fic has a happy ending]
> 
> [[No, I'm not going to 'murder the mother' like SW loves to do b/c in this 'verse they have effing ob-gyns and maternal health care and the Force doesn't view women as incubators]]


	5. Battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe and Rey argue about the future and an uncomfortable rift opens between them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING:  
> General angst  
> Longer discussion of the problems introduced last chapter   
> implied discussion of potential abortion  
> Autonomy discussions   
> Potential for maternal/fetal death 
> 
> (Lots of misunderstandings too)

What Rey knows about Poe’s Force signature:

At times, it’s kinetic, spiking with the need to fly, the urge to move. It’s green, and gold also. It’s strong, but not overpowering. Powerful, but not cruel. Vibrant, not fierce. It’s similar to the Force signature that flickers and grows inside her. It feels like home. Poe’s Force signature has wrapped itself around hers so many times, a soothing presence, a kindness, and she knows every inch of it. At least, she thought she did.

Poe stands in front of her in the little exam room in the MedBay and stares at the ground, and his Force signature is a maelstrom. Where she’s only felt rainstorms and delicate warmth, she suddenly finds X’us’Riia, swirling and screaming with something she doesn’t know the name of.

“Poe?” Rey breaks the silence.

Another oddity. She never talks first.

“What’s wr-”

“Please.” Poe’s face is one of a man in front of an execution squad (something he  _ is  _ familiar with, per the stories he and Finn tell so jokingly, as if the thought hasn’t given her nightmares, the two people she loves most almost dead if it weren’t for a rat-Imp-impersonator whose grudges weighed more than his loyalty). “Please don’t ask me what’s wrong.”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Folds her hands together and curls her toes into her boots, glad she’d gotten dressed after Kalonia had gone to speak with him. Rey needs all the layers she can get. Anything to block out some of the energy radiating out from Poe right now.

“I’m sorry,” Rey offers, the apology bitter in her mouth. She isn’t half-convinced that she is sorry. She doesn’t know what she has to be sorry for, but she does know she’s sorry Poe’s upset. Especially when he’s been so kind to her, so supportive. Perhaps it’s the lack of honesty she’s regretting. “I should have told you.”

“Should have told-” Poe cuts himself off with a bitter laugh and drags his hands through his hair. “You should have told me you were killing yourself? Yeah. Mighta - mighta been good to talk that out.”

She feels angry. Defensive. Her fingers itch like they always do when she’s angry (and, knowing her family history now, Rey guesses she shouldn’t be so surprised at that itch). Rey pushes the anger away and swallows, reaches for compassion. 

“The Force’s will-”

“Don’t talk to me about the Force, Rey!” Poe raises his voice, and Rey stops and stares at him. Poe hasn’t raised his voice with her since before Exegol - he’s angry, she knows, and … hurt. He’s very hurt. “Don’t try to use Jedi logic, or whatever, to try and justify you killing yourself. It’s - it’s incomprehensible.”

“I’m doing what I have to do,” Rey snaps, standing as fluidly as she can with her belly as distended as it is. She puts a hand on her stomach as she rises, and glowers up at Poe when her feet are solidly on the ground. “For  _ our  _ child.”

“If it’s  _ our _ child, then why wouldn’t you talk to me?” Poe demands, stepping in, and Rey tosses her hair out of her face, much more energized than she’d been an hour ago. Poe’s always pushed a little more vitality through her - hells, it’s part of the reason she’d turned to him for physical comfort in the hours after she’d died the first time - and right now is no exception.

“Because, it’s my body!” Rey counters just as loudly as him, one arm wrapped around herself as she jabs a finger at him. She doesn’t know why she’s yelling. She really doesn’t. She wants to cry. She wants Poe to hold her so she can cry and feel safe. But she doesn’t know how to  _ ask _ . Yelling is something she does know. “And you wouldn’t understand!”

“I wouldn’t?”

“No, because the Force is - it’s something you feel, something you have to study, and you don’t - you can’t know what it is to wield it, especially while growing a life inside me, and that’s something you’d never understand-”

“-This isn’t a normal case, Rey, or I’d be all on your side,  _ trust  _ me, but this is - it’s us, it’s something we should talk about because you’re  _ literally  _ killing yourself-”

“-there’s no guarantee I’m going to die! And if I do, the Force will have willed it!” Rey breaks in, and Poe’s mouth snaps shut.

For a second, she thinks she’s won, and she thinks  _ good, that was quick  _ because their arguments months ago had a tendency to brawl out for days.

And then -

Poe collapses like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Down into a crouch in a millisecond, his hands gripping his head as he sobs. Rey stares at him in shock, as Poe rocks back on his heels, shaking his head as he cries raggedly into his knees.

“Poe?” Rey whispers, reaching her hand out. She takes a step toward him. “Poe-”

He holds a hand up, pinching the bridge of his nose as he takes multiple, shaky breaths, and he stands, gripping the wall behind him as he slides upright, his eyes red and anywhere but her. 

“You’ve accepted it,” Poe says flatly. It’s not a question. “That you could die. You’re okay with dying.”

“Yes,” Rey answers honestly.

“Bullshit,” Poe says, and he looks at her at last. His gaze is so intense, she almost wishes he’d stayed staring at the ground. “You’re a survivor, Rey. I’ve always respected that about you - you’re a kriffing fighter, the best I’ve ever seen - you can’t be willing to give up everything now.”

“Of course I am.” Rey holds the side of her stomach delicately, giving him a weird look. Something isn’t adding up in her brain. “And - Poe, you’ve said it yourself, this could be - no, it probably  _ is  _ your only chance at having a child. I thought … I thought you’d understand, at least, how important it is that the baby stays alive, why I’m happy to give up everything.”

He wipes his nose and she thinks he’s nodding, but when she looks close enough, she sees he’s only trembling. 

Tired, she sits on the exam table and pats it awkwardly; Poe isn’t so angry with her that he can’t cross the room to sit next to her, and she immediately leans into his warm, searching out for his hand. 

“It’s our baby,” Rey says again, squeezing his hand. “It’s - it’s a good thing, this baby. I want … Poe, I want to be a mother.”

It’s a secret, sad wish she’s always had: to prove to herself that she can beat the odds of a scavenger girl from Jakku. That she can _ grow  _ something. And now, especially after learning the truth of her past, and the grief that stains it, she needs to prove that she can be good. That she can be nurturing. That she can love.

Poe squeezes her hand back, and Rey’s eyes burn with the sudden knowledge that she didn’t have to meet their child for her to know that she can love. 

Poe’s the evidence she needed.

She reels a little from her revelation, so she almost misses what he says.

“And I want to be a father,” Poe says, and it’s not a confession, it’s not the first time he’s more or less confirmed it. “I want - I want to do this with you, Rey.”

_ With you.  _

Not with  _ anyone.  _ With  _ her.  _ Rey’s heart skips a beat, and she hopes it’s not her organs failing like Kalonia warned her about.

“But that’s the whole - gods, Rey. I want to do it  _ with  _ you. As in - you. I know  _ you.  _ I -- I mean, I --” He stops and his jaw works over something as Rey studies his face, frowning. “I don’t know our child,” he whispers, his face bright red, “But I know - Rey, please don’t make me say it out loud.”

“Say what?” Rey asks, tilting her head.

“I -” Poe shakes his head, his eyes closed. “If it came down to having a family with you. Having this child with you. Or -- or having you, alive. Gods, Rey, please don’t make me say which one I want more.” His voice breaks, and a tear trickles down his already damp cheeks to tangle in his beard.

Rey stares at him, horrified. Her hand goes limp in his, and Poe sucks in a breath, nodding. 

_ He doesn’t actually want a family with me,  _ a mean, cold voice tells her.  _ This might be the opportunity he needed to remove his responsibility  _ -

No. No, that can’t be it. Poe’s been so supportive, so kind, so loving -

_ But not loving. He didn’t love you before this pregnancy. He doesn’t love you now. The daydream is gone, and now it’s reality, and he doesn’t want a part in it. He doesn’t want your baby. Only you do.  _

Rey knows how it feels to be an unwanted child. Her body feels stiff as she folds her hands in her lap and stares at the floor, something cold sliding into place in her heart.

_ My child will be wanted,  _ she’d promised herself months ago.  _ My child will be loved.  _

“I don’t think I said that right,” Poe says hesitantly, and Rey doesn’t respond, already a lightyear away. “Rey, I’m trying to tell you I care about you beyond a pregnancy. You’re not just - you’re not just carrying my child. I respect the hell out of you for that, and it’s - it’s been incredible, these past few months, for all the difficulties it’s thrown our - mostly your - way, but … Rey, are you listening to me?”

“Mhm.” Rey nods, half-telling the truth. Something in her is cataloguing what he says, but she doesn’t think she’ll be able to process it until later. Her exhaustion is back, creeping in on the edges.

“Okay,” Poe murmurs, probably not believing her. That’s fair.

(It’s not like she can believe  _ him  _ right now, either).

“Okay, um. This is - it’s selfish of me to ask. And before I ask it, know that … whatever you … choose, I’ll try and support you, no matter how much it hurts. I’ll … be there with you. Because you’re right, it is … your body, not mine, and … and it’s your life.” She’s too lost to hear his voice break again.

“Yeah.” Rey means to say it as a question to encourage him to go on, but it comes out flat.

“Do you … do you ever think about life … after the baby comes?” Poe asks softly, and Rey tilts her head to look at him again. Poe’s staring at the ground, and he’s fiddling with his necklace, an odd nervous habit he’s developed the past few months. “Like, the future. Have you thought about the future at all, if everything goes fine, and you’re okay, and the baby’s okay. Do you … think about what your life will look like? What you want it to look like?”

Rey wrinkles her nose and thinks about it. 

She’s thought about her baby, fat and healthy. She’s vaguely thought about how to care for it while fulfilling her duties as a Jedi; how to strap it across her chest or back on missions or treks or meditations. And … that’s been about it. Rey knows that isn’t what Poe’s asking.

“No,” she says, shrugging. “I … I can’t think of anything past survival right now.”

Something in his face crumbles, and even through the numbness that’s descended over her, Rey feels an odd need to apologize to him for making him look that sad (and she doesn’t even know  _ why  _ he’d be so sad when all she’d been was honest - survival is something she’s fought for, for so long, something he himself had admitted a few minutes ago.  _ So why is he upset _ ?)

Poe pulls away from her then. It’s cold in the MedBay, Rey realizes. It’s cold, and Poe is warm and now … he’s far away.

“Would you,” Poe clears his throat and sits ramrod straight, military posture. Even his voice sounds different, like it’s in the war room and they’re having a basic disagreement over a troop placement. 

Rey hates it. She hates it she hates it she hates it —

“Would you consider asking Finn or another Force sensitive person to help?”

“Help how?” Rey asks, wrinkling her nose. 

“With the … healing.” Poe’s shoulders sag but only for a moment. “If you’re set on doing this, will you accept help?

Rey thinks about it for a long moment if only to figure out how to say it. “It might be helpful to have someone nearby when I give birth-“ —  _ if we make it that far,  _ she doesn’t say because she can’t even think it to herself just yet — “but I can’t ask Finn to do that.”

“Why not? He loves you, Rey. He’d help in a second-“ there’s passion in Poe’s voice again, and that gives her a flare of hope that he hasn’t entirely given up on her.

“And he could die,” Rey says, matter-of-fact. Poe stills, and she steels herself to tell him the truth: “I’ve seen it before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that’s … that’s how I’m alive. It wasn’t some miracle of the Force.” Rey closes her eyes and lets out a tense breath, trying to calm herself before she says, “Ben Solo died saving me.”

“ _ What?” _

She hasn’t told anyone past Kalonia and Finn this, and the former had looked sad, the latter, doubtful, most likely due to their own past experiences with the younger Solo. 

“I died, fighting Palpatine.” Rey shivers, staring inside herself, back into that cold, dark place she’d been thrown while hovering between life and death as Ben fought for her at the cost of his own, battered body. “And Ben brought me back. He dragged himself out of a pit, and … and he pushed all his life force into me. I woke up,”  _ and we kissed  _ goes unsaid because she’d said that to Poe once a few months ago and he’d been sick for a day, assuming Ben had forced that on her (which admittedly was a fair assumption given how Kylo had tortured him). “And … he didn’t die of his wounds, Poe. He died because he gave every piece of his life energy to me.”

“So … you knew this could kill you?” Poe blinks slowly when she turns to look at him, her expression torn between apologetic and defensive. “You’ve seen it before, healing someone at the cost of your own life, and you chose—“

“I chose,” Rey agrees, simply, and Poe’s face seems to shutter. “And I won’t ask Finn to choose. It’s also not something he’s done before, so there’s no telling how badly it could go.”

“Right.” Poe’s voice is dull, and it doesn’t match how his signature roils. Rey reaches out to grab his arm, wanting to make him see sense, but he stands, either not knowing or not caring that she needs to touch him. 

“I … need some time,” Poe says at long last, his back to her. “I’ll talk to you later.” 

Talk, not see. Talk, not hold. Talk, not —

Poe disappears from the room, his back tense and hands curled into fists, and the doors hiss shut behind him.

Rey knows this exam room probably needs to be used by someone else — she’s surprised efficient, calm Kalonia let two hot-headed soldiers battle it out for so long in here — but she can’t move just yet. 

She curls her arms around her stomach and leans forward, sobbing bitterly and grieving for something she can’t even define. The last few months have been difficult, grueling even as she fights for the life growing inside her as well as her own life; but this is the first time Rey’s felt alone since she found out about the pregnancy. 

And it terrifies her.

* * *

Poe isn’t at dinner. He isn’t in their bunk at lights out. He doesn’t even feel like he’s on base, and Connix confirms that he took a speeder out through the jungle about a half hour after he left her.

Crying again, and hating herself for crying, Rey tries to fall asleep without Poe near her, but she can’t. Even when he’s been on missions recently, she’s known where he is, and for someone who prides themselves on their independence, Rey’s suddenly heartbreakingly aware of how much she’s become dependent on Poe’s presence and it’s comforting stability. 

The Dark that’s been tugging on her for over a year now rears back up and whispers promises to her — the same promises it probably made to her grandfather a hundred years ago — and Rey claps her hands over her ears as if they aren’t coming from inside her head. She cries harder, like she hasn’t cried since her parents had freshly left her in the desert, like she hasn't cried since sand poured in and stifled every sad thing in her life.

Someone’s behind her suddenly, touching her back, and Rey gasps, one hand on her stomach, the other summoning her lightsaber, the metal slapping into her palm, but she realizes who it is and doesn’t ignite the weapon.

And a good thing, too, because Poe Dameron is utterly defenseless, staring down at her with tears of his own drying on his face, one hand on her back, one hand on the bed. “P-“ Rey begins and then her face crumples, and Poe’s does too as he slides into the bed behind her fully and wraps his arms around her. 

“I th- I th-“ Rey can’t get the words out, but she tries, “you l-“

“I know,” Poe soothes as best he can while also crying, and he kisses her shoulder and presses his face into her back. “Didn’t realize how far out I’d gone, I swear, I wouldn’t leave like that, wouldn’t leave you.”

Rey holds his hands tight to her body and tries not to feel anything dark, but when Poe’s hand brushes over the swell of her stomach, soft and apologetic and kind, she worries that she’s standing at the precipice of a colossal mistake, a wreck waiting to happen, a disaster in the making. 

When they’ve both calmed down enough, Poe strokes her hair and untangles some of the knots. It feels like any other day except for the weight in her chest, and Rey’s half asleep, worn down by exhaustion and grief, when Poe speaks again. 

“Can we … can we go somewhere?”

“What? Right now?” Rey frowns at the wall in confusion; Poe keeps stroking her hair. 

“No, I mean...soon though. I want to take you to Yavin 4.”

Rey rolls over as smoothly as she can, wiggling and scooting as she navigates the movement with her belly. “You want to take me to your dad?”

“Sorta.” Poe shrugs and smiles at her, looking drained himself. “He wants to meet you, obviously, but — there’s stories he told me, about my mom and the tree, and … I know it’s a long shot, but the Force Tree does have some strength to it. Maybe …. maybe it can help?”

_ That isn’t how the Force works,  _ a gruff echo scolds in her mind, but Poe looks so helpful she finds herself nodding. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, and Poe deflates noticeably as if he’d been expecting a fight. “If Kalonia says I’m okay to travel, then yeah.”

Poe nods and strokes the backs of his fingers on her jaw; he leans in, and Rey tilts her face up, eager to kiss him so she can pretend everything is okay.

He changes trajectory last second and kisses her nose, her forehead, and Rey feels her heartbeat in her throat as he settles down with his back to her. 

“Goodnight,” she whispers in the dark, glad that he’s so close, terrified that he’s so far.

“Goodnight Rey.”

He speaks gently but the words he isn’t saying weigh as heavy as a happabore on her. She’s awake for a long time after that — and, judging by his breathing, Poe is too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no the chapter count went up and oh no they’ll be on Yavin next chapter and oh no the next chapter is called Labor and oh no there’s probably going to have to be a happy epilogue chapter to Make up for this


	6. Labor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey goes into early labor, and both mother and child fight for their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings**  
>  Early, distressed labor (in star wars time, it's about six weeks early, which would be about 30 days in our time)  
> Blood  
> Near-death experiences for Rey and the baby  
> Mortality  
> themes of Parental sacrifice

* * *

45-48 Weeks

Yavin is peaceful.

Rey wakes most mornings with her hand entwined with Poe’s, usually moored to the roundness of her belly. Her baby flutter-kicks inside her with increasing frequency, and she’s caught Poe awake more than once, his thumb over the ripple of her abdomen, his face torn between adoration and fear.

She misses running, misses swinging her lightsaber around in practice with Finn, misses being able to fly. But, the galaxy has bent and shifted around this light inside her, and she spends happy hours imagining the baby with her while she explores the wide universe, a small, natural family of two.

Sometimes when she can’t help it, she imagines what that galaxy would look like with a third person. Reasonably, she understands that Poe might want to help care for the child - she knows he does, actually. He’ll be a good father. It’s part of the reason she’s let their lives tangle so much; it will be beneficial to her child if it has a good father. 

It’s a matter of her stubbornness that she refuses to think of a third or fourth option, one where Poe is a single parent, or one where there’s two parents and no baby. She won’t think about it. She won’t let it happen.

Sometimes when she sleeps, a voice whispers to her about power, promising safety for her child. But Rey learned very young not to trust promises from anyone but herself, so she wakes herself up and shifts slightly, thumb stroking over her belly, eyes roving over Poe’s face, and goes back to sleep. The whispers stop a month before her due date, as though they’ve realized there are easier targets in the galaxy.

When they wake up, they go to see Kes at the main house on the ranch, and he cooks heaps of food for Rey, pleased when she eats all of it, her appetite back at last. 

“Hormones,” he tells her, ruffling Poe’s hair with a teasing grin. “My wife, Poe’s mom, it was the same way.”

“I usally eat like this,” Rey assures him, and that makes Poe laugh brightly, a happy noise she doesn’t hear often these days.

He thinks she can’t see him when his face goes dark and shuttered; he thinks she can’t feel when he prays to the Force. But, for as often as she’s out at the Uneti tree, listening to the galaxy thrum around her, he’s out there twice as often, praying and whispering and - she could swear the tree talks back to him.

Odd, that it would speak to a pilot before a Jedi.

After their horrible fight, she _misses_ him. Viscerally. She’s too big now to want to initiate sex, and she’s worried that was half their connection. But then Poe brushes her arm to get her attention while they stargaze, and her stomach shifts for reasons unrelated to the baby, and her fingertips burn with the desire to touch him back.

On the nights where she can’t help but imagine what it would look like if her baby had two parents who loved each other, Rey starts to curl into Poe’s side, nuzzling into him like a Loth-cat. He laughs the first time, startled, and runs his fingers through her hair after a few confused seconds.

It feels so nice she falls asleep immediately.

The next time it happens, she tucks her feet under his legs, sighing contentedly - her feet are always cold these days - and tells him goodnight, and doesn’t tell him she loves him. 

His fingers stutter where they paint unrecognizable figures on her bare shoulder, and then she feels the ghost of a kiss in her hair. She falls asleep crying, but she stays asleep for four hours, a new record now that her belly is so round.

Eventually, she’s bold enough to curl her fingers into the smattering of hair on his chest, that she was so fond of when they still had sex, and tilts her chin to brush a kiss against his jaw. Poe’s so still she’s worried she killed him somehow - _Force-static electricity?_ \- but he eventually relaxes, albeit slowly, and they wake up with both his arms around her.

After three weeks of living on the ranch, Rey catches him out behind the main house, chopping wood from a koyo tree with a deliberate ferocity that shouldn’t be as appealing as it is - she’s gained at least twenty pounds, back to her original weight and then some, with Kes’s diligent cooking and Poe’s fussing and Kalonia’s vitamins. Her fingers are puffy all the time. Her eyes are constantly sore. She pees when she laughs sometimes.

She shouldn’t be nearly this horny.

And yet …

He stops when he catches her staring, and wipes sweat from his brow, his bare chest nearly glowing in the afternoon sun. “Everything okay?” He calls out cautiously, walking towards her and taking off his work-gloves.

“Yep.” Rey nods and then bites her lip when he gets near. “What are you doing?”

“Well.” Poe comes to a stop in front of her and sets the axe down at his feet. “We have a crib, a mobile, some toys and clothes - thought you might like a rocking chair.”

Rey stares at him, a strange buzzing in her ears.

“It’s a - it’s a chair that, well, you know, rocks. Like it sounds. But, you can sit with the baby when it’s fussing, and it’s good for nursing, and-”

“Poe,” Rey whispers, her ears burning now. 

“And - I don’t wanna hear it, Rey,” he half-pleads, “I’m making this for both of you, and I - I don’t wanna hear that you think you w-”

He stops talking when she kisses him, fully, for the first time in almost a month. Poe doesn’t take any time at all to kiss her back, a soft moan in his throat as he buries his hands in her hair. They need to breathe after a while, and Poe rests his forehead on hers, laughing slightly. 

“What?” She asks.

“Well, damn.” Poe whispers back, and she kisses him again, sweetly, because he’s sweet and she’s missed kissing him.

“I missed that,” Poe says as though he’s read her mind, and Rey nods sleepily. 

A few minutes later, Kes calls Rey in because “It’s too hot for my nuera and her baby to be outside-”

“Nuera?” Rey mouths at Poe, who shakes his head with an embarrassed smile. She heads in regardless because she likes sitting with Kes in the drowsy, wet heat of the kitchen, sipping koyo juice and helping him tinker with old tools.

It feels … lighter, now that she’s kissed Poe, and Rey hums happily while she flips a mod-panel for a thresher-droid. She doesn’t catch Kes give Poe a wry smirk when he walks in, but she sighs contentedly when Poe walks past her chair, pausing for a moment with his hand on her back to kiss the side of her head.

* * *

50 Weeks

Around lunchtime every day, Poe stands in the middle of the river, his hands on Rey’s back, helping her float. He’s asked her why she didn’t just swim like a fish - she’s good at everything after all - and she looked at him so seriously and whispered, “I’d drown.”

She can’t swim. Of course she can’t. She grew up on kriffing Jakku, after all.

But, she can get abominably hot in the heat of midday, so they’ve taken to walking down to the river to cool down. He still can’t believe she trusts him enough to hold onto her so she can close her eyes and simply exist in the cool water. He also can’t believe she’s started to kiss him again, after their awful fight in Kalonia’s office.

Part of him knows that they haven’t really talked past their fear. Haven’t addressed the issue of Rey hiding her condition for so long, haven’t addressed the fact that in five or six weeks, they’ll have to confront the idea of labor, of what might happen to Rey or the baby in those hours given the state of their hearts and general health.

Part of him wants to encourage Rey to take her up on Kalonia’s offer to induce labor a few weeks early, or to perform a Corellian-section to get the baby out at that time. He knows Rey is thinking about it - letting nanny-droids and nurse-droids take over outside the womb to finish the baby’s development - and she knows he approves of the idea, but in the end, as she’d yelled at him weeks ago, it’ll be her choice.

Part of him - most of him - wants to send his dad a gift every day for the rest of his life because he hasn’t see Rey smile, or eat, or laugh as much as she has in these last few weeks than when she’s sitting at the kitchen table, unaware she’s in Shara Bey’s old seat, chatting with Kes casually in the sleepy humidity.

“Hmm,” Rey hums, shifting in his arms and breaking his thoughts up into one, simple one of her name.

“What is it?” He murmurs, pushing off from the bottom of the river to let them float with the current for a few seconds. He plants his feet before they can go too far, and then steadily pushes back to where their things are, up on the bank.

“Feels nice,” Rey whispers. A shadow crosses her face. “Had bad dreams last night.”

“Yeah?” Poe kisses the shell of her ear, allowing himself the intimacy. She sucks in a breath, and her belly dips briefly above the waterline. He marvels at the stretchmarks there, at how her bellybutton has just started to protrude, and feels a towering affection in him.

Part of him wonders if she can hear how much he loves her in the Force, if his heartbeat gives him away, his hormones, his thoughts.

“Yeah.” Rey shakes her head, and cracks an eye open to smile up at him. “But then I woke up and you were still there, so it was okay.”

His heart breaks a little - her dreams must be about him leaving her. Poe bends as much as he can to brush a kiss over her lips, and Rey hums softly again.

It tangles him up inside to kiss her - he’s grateful of course, but it karks him up something fierce to know that he can kiss her but he won’t be able to keep these moments with her if she decides she doesn’t want him to help raise the baby.

Or if she finds someone else she’d rather marry. He’d still, probably, be able to be part of their child’s life, but … she’d have other kids with someone else if that were in the cards, and he’d be separate, not part of the nucleus of her life, always on the outskirts, an addendum to her happiness.

Poe swallows, and forces himself to remember that it’s her happiness that will ultimately matter more than his place in it.

In a quarter hour, it’s time for lunch - they can hear his dad shouting somewhere in the distance, and Rey laughs as Poe tugs her towards shore. He taps her on the arm when it’s safe for her to stand, and he helps her balance back upright, getting himself hopelessly muddy in the process.

Rey walks slightly behind him as they wind through the trees, their sandals slapping lightly as they make their way back home. He has an intense vision of this being their everyday life for the rest of their lives, happy and warm and content in the sunshine, playing in the shallows of the river with their child and coming home to eat and be near the rest of their family.

They can build a house for Finn and whoever he eventually settles down with. They can have a house for all of Black Squadron to stay in. They can have … well, they can have everything, and Poe can have everything, and he hates himself for not being brave enough to _ask for it._

“What’s wrong?” Rey asks, her voice strangled. Her sandals slow down on the path, and Poe winces. She’s caught whatever surge of emotion he let out just then. Fair enough.

“I’ve been thinking…” Poe begins, his own steps slowing to match hers.

“ _Oh,_ ” Rey breathes, a gasp of … something. Poe flinches again. This already isn’t going great.

“Yeah, I know.” Poe laughs. “Dangerous habit for me to form suddenly. But… I’m just … I want you to know that I’m here for you, no matter what happens.”

Rey’s steps stop, and her voice is strained. “Poe-”

“I need to - I need to say it. I - it’s been … awful, and wonderful, and bad, and amazing, being with you these past months, but … Rey, it would destroy me if - if you went through this whole thing without realizing that - baby or no baby, what I was trying to say that day was-”

Rey’s quiet, and Poe pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to summon the courage to face her.

“I love you.” There’s no sound but the Woolamanders and flocks of tropical birds, and Rey’s own slightly hitched breathing. She isn’t yelling, at least. That’s … an improvement from last time he tried to tell her this. “I love you, so kriffing much, and - and I know this started because of our baby, and … and it let us spend a lot more time together, and in that time, I’ve realized-”

“ _Poe_.” There’s a sob in her voice now, and Poe wilts.

“Right, yeah,” he half-turns, already beating himself up. “I know, it’s a -”

Rey isn’t behind him. Poe frowns, his heart skipping a beat, and then turns slightly more to see Rey gripping a tree, her face white and pale, her hand on her stomach.

In a second, his self-pity vanishes into intense fear, and he’s at her side in a flash. “What? What happened-”

“S-something is wrong.” Rey takes a breath in and releases it out, whining on the exhale as her fingernails dig into bark.

“Is it the baby-” Poe looks down as Rey shivers with pain, and his stomach plummets: there’s blood running down her leg.

“It’s too early,” Rey whispers, her eyes closed as she heaves for breath. “It’s too-”

“I’ll get dad and a droid, stay here,” _stay here where the fuck is she going to go -_ “It’ll be okay-”

“Don’t leave me,” Rey says, her voice a wail of pain as she grabs onto him instead of the tree.

“Right.” Poe nods, nods again, and then bellows towards the house. “Dad! DAD!”

Kes comes running into view a half minute later - thank the Maker they were so close to home - his face pale white. 

“Comm Kalonia,” Poe begs, holding as tightly to Rey as she’s holding onto him. “Something is really, really wrong.”

“Calling her now.” Kes pulls up his comm-watch and starts to run past them. “You’ve got this, mijita, I’m going to the village to get the doctors.”

“Thanks,” Poe says, trying to help Rey’s arm around his shoulders. “We have to get you inside, sweetheart, so you can lie down-”

“Don’t want - to - where’s - Kes -” Rey gasps out between breaths. They start to stagger forward.

“Alderaanian doctors, in the village - trained with the best, back in the day.” Poe tries to sound cheerful, but panic chokes him worse than Kylo Ren ever did.

Somehow, somehow, they get to the house, BB-8 a panicked whirl of orange and white as it skitters around their feet. They get to the ground-floor bedroom with the big, airy windows with the soft, white curtains, the one that faces the sunrise, the one that Rey loved and picked as the nursery, and Poe lets her go to grab some water.

When he comes back, he nearly drops the glass when he sees and hears Rey, gripping the end of the bed, leaning over, her face twisted with pain as she screams louder than he’s ever heard anyone scream. 

It’s like the galaxy rips in half.

* * *

Pain is a funny thing.

She’s never been afraid of pain.

But now, as it feels like her bones move in her body, and she struggles to keep two hearts beating, Rey realizes how foolish she was to think that pain was something she knew well.

She doesn’t fear it, at least, no matter what monstrous face it takes. Logically, she knows that if she feels pain, she’s alive. It means there’s still hope.

Distantly, she’s aware of Poe at her side, wiping her forehead and kissing her cheek, holding her hand as her body writhes. Distantly, she’s aware of Kes, pale and demanding questions of the doctors who came running to help, doctors who know what it’s like to put a body back together. Distantly, she’s aware of Kalonia’s arrival.

Then, as Poe’s begging her - _please, please don’t leave me, keep pushing, please -_

Everything fades to white.

It’s a massive universe that she exists in. Her fingernails become spiral galaxies, her hair elongates into fractals that stretch from corner to corner. Her eyes are black holes, her mouth a perfect nebula. There’s no pain here.

There’s only the Force, which welcomes her home at the same time something behind her holds her back. Unaware that something _bigger_ than it is calling her forward. 

One, stubborn, angry voice, half-sobbing as it anchors her to her past life, her physical manifestation, calling out to her across infinite time and space, _keep fighting, you can stay, I need you, please, I love you sweetheart, don’t leave me here, Maker, please, please don’t take her, not her -_

As much as she can’t feel pain here, Rey wonders if she can still feel hope.

* * *

“Poe.”

Kes turns to him, his sleeves stained with blood. He doesn’t seem to care about the earthquake. Poe’s entire vision is shaking, why does no one care, why is everyone still running about like the moon isn’t splitting in half-

Oh. He’s shaking.

“Poe.” Kes repeats gently, a bundle in his arms. That’s where the blood’s come from, Poe realizes. It’s not the _wrong_ blood around Rey on the bed. It’s … it doesn’t look wrong around the bundle’s edges.

“Poe, your daughter-”

_Daughter -_

“- she needs you, mijo.”

“She needs her mother,” Poe mumbles, his heartbeat in his ears. His mouth. He can’t talk around it. His breath shatters into a sob and he doesn’t even feel it. “I need h-”

“Take her.” Kes moves his arms somehow, and he instinctively wraps himself around the little bundle. He looks down. She’s - she’s so small.

Her eyes aren’t open. She isn’t crying. 

Poe knows she should be crying.

He slips a bloodied finger down the softness of his daughter’s cheek, feeling as though he’s handling tissue. His hands are too big for her. He shouldn’t -

“I can’t,” he whispers, terrified out of his mind.

They’re still working to get Rey breathing again. _C’mon,_ he begs, _please, I love you, please -_

“Take her,” Kes urges, pushing at his forearm gently. “You can’t do anything here-”

“I can _be with her,_ ” Poe sobs angrily, and Kes pushes more insistently now towards the door. “No! No, I’m not leaving her - Rey!”

His daughter still isn’t crying.

“Go to the tree,” Kes whispers, pushing him one last time. Poe stops and stares at him, confused. “Talk to It. You’ll see.”

Poe nods, confused, and then stumbles out of the room, his feet moving of their own accord. Distantly, he feels something in his mind screaming at him to not leave Rey, a horrible, afraid voice screaming, but he ignores it for now, set on the task his father gave him.

The tree isn’t far from the ranch - he can still hear the distant bustle of the doctors if he can focus over the ringing in his ears, and he kneels at the foot of the tree, his daughter pressed to his chest.

Remembering something his dad told him - a fairy tale, he’d thought - he lays his baby on the roots and closes his eyes, his fingers pressed to bark he once spent a year nursing back to health.

“Please,” he whispers, “please, please, please-”

 _Poe Dameron -_ the tree whispers back, _shield of the Force_ -

“I don’t -” Poe cuts himself off and tries not to cry. “I - please, please, save her-”

_She will save herself, if she chooses._

“My baby,” Poe says, his nails digging in slightly. “Our - our daughter, will sh-she- she’s so small, I’m so afraid-”

_It is a parent’s lot to fear, Shield of the Force. And it is their duty to act. What would you do, to save your child’s life?_

“Anything,” Poe answers immediately. He opens his eyes and looks at his daughter’s still face, panic seizing him horribly. “I’d - I’d do anything. For her, for Rey, for either - please, please help me-”

 _It is an even balance,_ the tree hums, _one your father once agreed to._

“What?” Poe frowns, and a vision flashes behind his eyes.

 _Kes Dameron, thirty years old, his son before him on the ground. A different ground. A similar tree. He’s kneeling, too, praying over the child, begging the Force to do anything, to_ take _anything, anything for his son -_

“Oh.” Love for his father erupts painful-bright in his chest, a yearning chasm of understanding, a complete picture now that his daughter struggles to live.

 _And?_ The tree asks. _Would you freely give?_

“Yes.” Poe answers without hesitation. “I freely give it.”

A shudder runs down his spine as soft light encapsulates his hands, then his body, then his daughter. The tree hums, its leaves shaking in the nonexistent wind, and Poe lets out a long, agonized groan as pain-that’s-not-pain rips through him, leaving him exhausted and wrung dry.

A shrill cry pierces the air, and Poe sags forward, the glow gone, staring in rapturous joy at the pink, squalling face of his daughter, her heart beating with the shared gift: the love of her mother, and her life-force; the love of her father, and five years from the end of his life to save hers.

In the house, Kalonia grips Kes’s arm as Rey Skywalker takes a gasp of breath with no doctor near her, her anchors to the galaxy suddenly thriving in the Force. 


	7. The Last Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's life after giving birth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello sorry for all the angst and grump last chapter there is more now and i hope you like it and the end

Racing down the dirt path between the trees, Rey summons grace from the Force, borrows it, and flies over a fallen trunk. She barely pauses on the other side, adjusts the weight on her back, and then is off again, lightsaber in her hand as she flits among the foliage, sweat pouring off her brow and down her neck.

Kalonia has urged her frequently to take it slow, but with the horror of her labor six months behind her - and the memory of dying-not-dying a _second_ time still living with her - Rey’s longing to move and be in the world around her overpowers any concern she might have over her personal health.

There’s a happy burble in her ear as she springs along another fallen tree, and Rey laughs back, feeling free and wild and joyful. A wet, warm nose presses into her neck, and Rey grins, grabbing a low-hanging branch to swing herself over a small crevasse in the ground.

“You like that?” She asks, half-shouting over the noise of wind in her ear. Her answer is another splurt of giggle-wet-love, and her cheeks ache with her happiness. 

Her baby goes with her everywhere - except the times where she sits in the arms of her father, or grandfather - and Rey can’t kick the powerful pride she has, even if it’s not a Jedi’s place to feel pride.

She’s a mother though, and she knows from her time with Leia that motherhood has a power the Force alone cannot promise to a Jedi. The love she has with her daughter is open, wide, selfless, and the pride she has in her is of the same stock as that love.

Her baby is _fat._ Fat, and squishy, with little rolls of chub around her wrists and ankles, her belly protruding and her cheeks round and flushed with health and vitality. Rey knows if she swung her baby off the sling on her back right now, her large brown eyes would be bright, her brown curls mussed from the wind. 

But, she can’t secure her baby to her back without Poe next to her to help check the tightness of the straps, and Rey’s pride doesn’t let her assume that everything she’ll do for her daughter will be perfect. The sling is currently Poe-approved, which means safe for her fat, happy baby, which means Rey can run in the jungle and be free and wild and happy herself.

The temple is almost ready for the next generation of Jedi, and she could scream with excitement - the thought of Finn near, helping train the others, the thought of small, scared, innocent children coming and trusting her to show them the way through the Force. It’s happening, and it’s real, and it’s _hers,_ and while she might have doubted her ability to train Younglings a year ago (hadn’t the patience, the time, the skills, the belief in herself, the _patience_ ), it’s in no small part thanks to the baby on her back that Rey trusts herself to do right by the Jedi-in-training.

Rey careens down the path towards home, and does whoop in excitement when she spies the smoke from the main house, the smell of fragrant meat in the air. A little fist clobbers her in the ear, and Rey could leap with it, the joy of having a healthy, energetic baby.

The babies on Jakku never had any energy at all. They never made it past the first or second year, either.

She slows to a halt outside the little house - now with additional nursery, thanks to Kes, and Yolo and Iolo, who showed up with tools and a stubborn determination to help however they could - and sees Poe’s already back from the harvest, the door wide-open to catch a breeze. She can hear BB-8 up at the main house, no doubt scolding Kes over something, and Poe's singing to himself while he works on something at his data-pad.

He sets it aside smiles broadly when she jogs up the steps, standing up to kiss her cheek before pulling the baby out of the sling.

“Hey, Temmi, hi, baby,” he croons, dotting her face with kisses. “Oh my gods, she’s even cuter than she was this morning, huh, aren’t you?”

“She might be,” Rey laughs, pulling the sling from her shoulders and hanging it on the bracket Poe affixed to the wall. “How was the harvest?” 

“Good, good, Dad and I fixed up that thresher droid, so it’s been going a lot smoother.”

As he’s talking, she spots a bowl of porridge at the little table and eyes it hungrily.

“That’s for you,” Poe said, waving a hand and grinning, and Rey settles into a chair with a groan and pulls the bowl towards her. She paws at her left breast which feels itchy and full - time to nurse soon, and she cannot _wait_ for her breasts to shrink again, for the milk to stop flowing (even though she is _thrilled_ to see the milk when it comes, thrilled that she, she of all people, a desert rat with no meat on her bones and a lifetime of physical hardship, can make milk, and happy, fat babies).

Her nose twitches at the discomfort, but she pushes it out of her mind as she starts to inhale the food. 

“Baby, baby, baby,” Poe sings, nuzzling his daughter’s hair as she hiccups a laugh and tries to grab his beard. He takes her hand and kisses it onetwothree times, and pretends to dance with her in the middle of the room. “Baby Temmi, baby baby-”

Temmi scrunches her face up - her face might look like Poe right now, but her expressions are _very_ Rey, or so they’ve been told by Kes and all the Alderaanian villagers who’ve come by - and then makes a grumpy burble.

“Hungry baby,” Poe notes. He nestles her in the baby seat and showers her head with kisses as he scoots to the ice box in the corner of the room. Temmi cries a little as her father waltzes away, and Rey reaches over with her hand not gripping her spoon and tickles her tummy a little.

Temmi is tragically torn between distraction and daddy, Rey notes, and she snorts as she tries to give Temmi a bite of her porridge.

But then Poe is back with a bowl of pre-mashed Koyo, and he sits in the chair on the other side of Temmi and holds up a spoon of it. “There you go,” he says as Temmi eats the whole bite with relish, the purple mash sprawling down her chin. “Missed a spot.” He feeds her slowly, Temmi baby-babbling at him as Poe nods seriously and hums with everything she squeaks and squeals.

There are flowers in the window, Rey realizes, and her plants have already been watered on the porch - she noticed when she walked in. The Koyo had already been washed, and she sees clean bottles lined up next to the ice-box so she can pump later, and - and Poe’s sitting here, having worked all morning, feeding his - _their_ \- daughter like it’s the best thing he’s ever done.

He hasn’t flown since she gave birth, hasn’t left her side except when she asks for space, gets up when the baby cries and Rey’s tootiredtomoveorexist, and while he gets somewhat grouchy when he’s overtired, he’s been patient, and kind, and devoted, and -

And she’s never -

“I heard you,” Rey says without warning in her own brain, “That day.”

“Huh?” Poe glances over, frowning. 

They haven’t kissed since that day. Partly because Rey, after getting out of bed, felt so gross she would stab someone with a vibroblade if they so much as touched her and weren’t her baby. But she doesn’t feel gross so much anymore, feels tired and aches all the time and will sometimes still cry randomly, but - but her stomach aches now when she sees Poe in the morning, when she sees him with their child, when he comes in from the rain and drips on the floor, when he lets her beat him at klikklak after Temmi’s fallen asleep.

“I heard you, when she was coming.” Rey trails a finger over Temmi’s messy cheek. “You said you loved me.”

“Oh.” Poe’s face is red under his beard and down his neck and along his ears and - and oh gods, her stomach hurts with it. It’s a sign of his own bravery that he looks her in the face when he says, “Wasn’t sure if - Well, it was true. It … it still is.”

“Okay.” Rey nods, and Poe half-smiles at her, a little sad in the eyes, and then she remembers it’s because she hasn’t -- “I love you.”

Poe drops the spoon he’s holding, and it clatters on Temmi’s tray. She fusses at her father, scolding him for clumsiness before she smashes her hand in the mess of Koyo leftovers on her tray and brings it to her mouth happily.

Poe stares at her, and Rey smirks at him. “What, are you going to say something irritating, like _I know_?”

“No,” Poe croaks, tears in his eyes, “No, ‘cause, hells, I didn’t know-”

“Well.” Rey examines her hands, suddenly mortified and about to cry herself. And then Temmi will cry, and all three of them will be crying and nothing will get done all day. “Well it’s true. I love you. So, I don’t know if-”

Poe’s next to her suddenly, and she looks up with a gasp; Poe frames her face in his hands and laughs wetly as she stands up as well, his hands gentle on her jaw the whole time.

When they’re eye-level with each other, Poe asks, “Really?” and all she can do is nod. Then he kisses her, and it’s as sweet as she remembers it being, sweet and gentle but strong and firm, just like Poe is, and she wants to _laugh_ because it took over a year and a half for her to get this right and they have a _baby_ but now, _now_ they love each other.

“I love you,” Poe whispers when they stop kissing and press their foreheads together, “And-”

And Temmi squeals, angry-loud at being forgotten, and they laugh together before Poe turns from Rey and scoops Temmi, mess and all, up out of her chair. 

“And I love you,” he reminds her, kissing the side of her head and grinning at Rey while bouncing their daughter. “I love you both so, so much-”

Rey laughs then, for real, her stomach _aching_ and not aching because everything has fallen together after falling apart more times for her to count. 

She figures that in the holonovels she’s seen - that Poe reads for fun sometimes - that a declaration of love often ends in riotous, wild sex or an extreme adventure or a cruel separation to keep the audience interested.

But it’s not that story. They’ve had the crazy, wild sex, and they’ve gone on _plenty_ of adventures, and have faced enough cruelty for several lifetimes.

It’s not that story because they did things backwards and out of order, but they’ve arrived here, here where they give their daughter a bath in the middle of the day because her cheeks are stained purple from breakfast. And Poe, with his sleeves rolled up and his hair a mess and koyo up and down his shirt, smiles at Rey over the little bathtub while she smooths a washcloth over her daughter’s tummy, and it’s not a wild adventure in the stars, and it’s not the sort of moment that anyone would write poetry about.

It’s better than that because it’s her family, and Rey can’t imagine a better story, or adventure, than this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who commented and kudos'ed and recc'ed this fic. It means a lot, especially now that I'm always Stress and Sad because of the world, etc. 
> 
> I hope this happy ending made up for the angst along the way?


End file.
